Changed

I KNOW not why my soul is rack’d:

Why I ne’er smile as was my wont:

I only know that, as a fact,

I don’t.

I used to roam o’er glen and glade

Buoyant and blithe as other folk:

And not infrequently I made

A joke.

A minstrel’s fire within me burn’d.

I’d sing, as one whose heart must break,

Lay upon lay: I nearly learn’d

To shake.

All day I sang; of love, of fame,

Of fights our fathers fought of yore,

Until the thing almost became

A bore.

I cannot sing the old songs now!

It is not that I deem them low;

’T is that I can’t remember how

They go.

I could not range the hills till high

Above me stood the summer moon:

And as to dancing, I could fly

As soon.

The sports, to which with boyish glee

I sprang erewhile, attract no more;

Although I am but sixty-three

Or four.

Nay, worse than that, I’ve seem’d of late

To shrink from happy boyhood—boys

Have grown so noisy, and I hate

A noise.

They fright me, when the beech is green,

By swarming up its stem for eggs:

They drive their horrid hoops between

My legs:—

It’s idle to repine, I know;

I’ll tell you what I’ll do instead:

I’ll drink my arrowroot, and go

To bed.