Youth And Folly
YOUTH AND FOLLY by ROBERT GRAVES
*('Life is a very awful thing! You young fellows are too busy being jolly to realize the folly of your lives.'
---A Charterhouse Sermon)*
In Chapel often when I bawl
The hymns, to show I'm musical,
With bright eye and cheery voice
Bidding Christian folk rejoice,
Shame be it said, I've not a thought
Of the One Being whom I ought
To worship: with unwitting roar
Other godheads I adore.
I celebrate the Gods of Mirth
And Love and Youth and Springing Earth,
Bacchus, beautiful, divine,
Gulping down his heady wine,
Dear Pan piping in his hollow,
Fiery-headed King Apollo
And rugged Atlas all aloof
Holding up the purple roof.
I have often felt and sung,
'It's a good thing to be young:
Though the preacher says it's folly,
Is it foolish to be jolly?'
I have often prayed in fear,
'Let me never grow austere;
Let me never think, I pray,
Too much about Judgment Day; Never, never feel in Spring, Life's a very awful thing!' Then I realize and start
And curse my arrogant young heart, Bind it over to confess
Its horrible ungodliness,
Set myself penances, and sigh That I was born in sin, and try
To find the whole world vanity.
| Title |
Youth And Folly
|
|---|---|
| Author |
Graves, Robert (1895-1985)
|
| Item date |
(1995, 1997, 1999)
|
| Content | |
| Copyright |
The Robert Graves Copyright Trust
|
| Digital repository | |
| Repository name |
ProQuest
|
| Repository address URL | |
| First line |
In Chapel often when I bawl
|
| Publication source |
Robert Graves Complete Poems: Volumes 1 - 3
|
| Publication editor |
Graves, Beryl and Ward, Dunstan
|
| Publishers |
Carcanet
|
| Publication place |
Manchester
|
Collection
Citation
“Youth And Folly,” by Graves, Robert (1895-1985). The Robert Graves Copyright Trust via First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed May 13, 2024, http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/3472.
Permitted Use
This item is available for non-commercial educational use under the terms of the Jisc Model Licence. Further details available at: http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/permitteduse
