Wait Till You Come To Forty Year, Berton Braley
By the record I am forty, it is very plainly writ
And it is useless to deny it or get away from it;
Yet my gayness flouts my grayness (and I'm not so very gray)
And I still can measure pleasure in a careless, youthful way.
Of my joints there are a couple not so supple as they were
And my hinges give me twinges, though but seldom, I aver;
None the less I view existence like an adolescent pup
I am still a boy inside me and I swear I won't grow up!
What though debutantes consider I'm a relic of the past,
Or by youthful critics truthful with the Hasbeens I am classed,
What though clothes however trimly, slimly tailored, grimly show
That my salad days are over by a score of years or so?
Still I find a braver savor in the folly and the fun
And the joy of life about me than I did at twenty-one;
And if jolly laughter's folly meant entirely for the young
I shall be a fool of twenty till the day that I am hung!
By the record I am forty -- and the record is exact
But my unregenerate spirit mocks the cold statistic fact,
For I still will challenge censure at Adventure's finger-crook,
Or, with preamble, gamble, as I leap before I look!
I insist I can't be forty till I feel that way within.
Say I'm lying that I'm trying to forget how years depart--
But I'm damned I'll be forty when I'm twenty in my heart!
--Berton Braley, 1921. (From The Bismarck Tribune, 4/16/1921)
