Of Any Old Man by Isaac Rosenberg

Wreck not the ageing heart of quietness
With alien uproar and rude jolly cries,
Which (satyr-like to a mild maiden's pride)
Ripen not wisdom but a large recoil ;
Give them their withered peace, their trial grave,
Their past youth's three-scored shadowy effigy.
Mock them not with your ripened turbulence,
Their frost - mailed petulance with your torrid wrath,
When, edging your boisterous thunders, shivers one word
(Pap to their senile sneering, drug to truth,
The feigned rampart of bleak ignorance)
" Experience "--crown of naked majesties,
That tells us naught we know not, but confirms.
0 think, you reverend shadowy austere,
Your Christ's youth was not ended when he died.