At A Meeting Of Friends Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCC DDEE FFG HHII JJK LLMM INNOO CCPP MMPP MMMM QQRR| AUGUST | A |
| - | |
| I REMEMBER why yes God bless me and was it so long ago | B |
| I fear I'm growing forgetful as old folks do you know | B |
| It must have been in 'forty I would say 'thirty nine | C |
| We talked this matter over I and a friend of mine | C |
| - | |
| He said 'Well now old fellow I'm thinking that you and I | D |
| If we act like other people shall be older by and by | D |
| What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be | E |
| There is always a line of breakers to fringe the broadest sea | E |
| - | |
| 'We're taking it mighty easy but that is nothing strange | F |
| For up to the age of thirty we spend our years like Change | F |
| But creeping up towards the forties as fast as the old years fill | G |
| And Time steps in for payment we seem to change a bill ' | - |
| - | |
| 'I know it ' I said 'old fellow you speak the solemn truth | H |
| A man can't live to a hundred and likewise keep his youth | H |
| But what if the ten years coming shall silver streak my hair | I |
| You know I shall then be forty of course I shall not care | I |
| - | |
| 'At forty a man grows heavy and tired of fun and noise | J |
| Leaves dress to the five and twenties and love to the silly boys | J |
| No foppish tricks at forty no pinching of waists and toes | K |
| But high low shoes and flannels and good thick worsted hose ' | - |
| - | |
| But one fine August morning I found myself awake | L |
| My birthday By Jove I'm forty Yes forty and no mistake | L |
| Why this is the very milestone I think I used to hold | M |
| That when a fellow had come to a fellow would then be old | M |
| - | |
| But that is the young folks' nonsense they're full of their | I |
| foolish stuff | N |
| A man's in his prime at forty I see that plain enough | N |
| At fifty a man is wrinkled and may be bald or gray | O |
| I call men old at fifty in spite of all they say | O |
| - | |
| At last comes another August with mist and rain and shine | C |
| Its mornings are slowly counted and creep to twenty nine | C |
| And when on the western summits the fading light appears | P |
| It touches with rosy fingers the last of my fifty years | P |
| - | |
| There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold | M |
| But there never was one of fifty that loved to say 'I'm old' | M |
| So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years | P |
| Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers | P |
| - | |
| Now here I stand at fifty my jury gathered round | M |
| Sprinkled with dust of silver but not yet silver crowned | M |
| Ready to meet your verdict waiting to hear it told | M |
| Guilty of fifty summers speak Is the verdict old | M |
| - | |
| No say that his hearing fails him say that his sight grows dim | Q |
| Say that he's getting wrinkled and weak in back and limb | Q |
| Losing his wits and temper but pleading to make amends | R |
| The youth of his fifty summers he finds in his twenty friends | R |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about At A Meeting Of Friends poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Best Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes