Ere that I say farewell to youth, and take
The homely road that leads to life’s decline,
Let me be sure again I shall not pine
To taste the bliss you bid me to forsake:
That Spring’s returning raptures will not wake
Too late repentance for abjuring mine,
Nor the old sweets I pledge me to resign
Behind them leave the bitterness of ache.
Yet is there nothing of one’s generous prime
To bear me kindred company to the end,
Some passionate longing, some belief sublime,
Some wrong to right, some failure to befriend?
Leave me but these, I care not where I wend,
But down life’s slope go hand-in-hand with Time.
Alfred Austin (1835 – 1913) was an English journalist and a poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or simply refused the honor. It was claimed that he was being rewarded for his support for the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury in the General Election of 1895.