Classic Poem

Decrepit, wretched, broken, old; —
Are these the scathless limbs, grown cold,
Of which the men of Argoed told?

Old crutch, whose burden I am grown,
What of my youth, this long while flown, —
That marched with shouldered spear, alone?

Alas! is not the harvest here,
When the rush grows yellow, the bracken sere?
What I hated once, — the fall of the year!

Old crutch! Is that the winter's rain?
Or the merry men at the hearth again?
They forget the dark bedside of Llywarch Hin.

Old crutch! Is not the spring new-come?
When the cuckoo's brown, and bright the foam,
When the maidens sing the tired men home!

Old crutch! Is not the summer in?
The green blades curl; the blackbirds sing,
And the young to sharpen their beaks begin.

Alas, — I ask in my wretchedness
I know not what. The years may press,
But I cannot mark their more and less.

This leaf the wind drives down in the mould, —
(Woe, woe to the leaf, when the wind grows cold),
This year it was born, this year it is old.

The four things I hated the most, descend,
Fierce, hosted, upon me, who have not a friend:
Old age, coughing, sickness and grief without end.

Oh, wretched the lot decreed Llywarch Hin,
On the night he was born. Great sorrow and pain,
Long sorrow, and no deliverance from pain.