Is youth not less pedantic, less absurd,
Less prone to value things of little worth
In failing to wax wrath about a word
That bears suspicion of a lowly birth?
All words have known their low and vulgar days —
Known grime and poverty when they were young;
And many a proud and pompous modern phrase
Was once the plaything of a common tongue.
But as we grow respectable and staid
Mere sound, to middle-age, parades as sense.
Grey slaves of precedent, we grow afraid
Of youth and all its sane inconsequence.
Forgetting words are no god-given things,
With queer intolerance we would insist —
In terms to which the mould of ages clings —
On purity that never did exist.
Language is not the gift of any god;
Rude tribesmen made it when the race was young;
And as around the weary earth we plod
Still the illiterate enrich the tongue;
And still while careless youth goes gaily rid
Of age’s caution, precedent and pence,
Better a cobber who’ll lend half a quid
Than all the thrifty pedant’s “commonsense.”
(C J Dennis)
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Based on Topics: God Poems, Youth Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Charity Poems, Age Poems, Birth Poems, Language Poems, Failure Poems, Moderation & Temperance Poems, Thrift PoemsBased on Keywords: illiterate, cobber, quid, parades, god-given, pedant, pedantic, respectable, middle-age, commonsense, tribesmen