Over the Brazier

by Robert Graves

YOUTH AND FOLLY

("Life is a very awful thing! You young fellows are too busy being jolly to realize the folly of your lives."

—A Charterhouse Sermon)

In Chapel often when I bawl

The hymns, to show I'm musical,

With bright eye and cheery voice

Bidding Christian folk rejoice,

Shame be it said, I've not a thought

Of the One Being whom I ought

To worship: with unwitting roar

Other godheads I adore.

I celebrate the Gods of Mirth

And Love and Youth and Springing Earth,

Bacchus, beautiful, divine,

Gulping down his heady wine,

Dear Pan piping in his hollow,

Fiery-headed King Apollo

And rugged Atlas all aloof

Holding up the purple roof.

I have often felt and sung,

"It's a good thing to be young:

Though the preacher says it's folly,

Is it foolish to be jolly?"

I have often prayed in fear,

"Let me never grow austere;

Let me never think, I pray,

Too much about Judgment Day;

Never, never feel in Spring,

'Life's a very awful thing!'"

Then I realize and start

And curse my arrogant young heart,

Bind it over to confess

Its horrible ungodliness,

Set myself penances, and sigh

That I was born in sin, and try

To find the whole world vanity.

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