Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONG, by JAMES ROBINSON PLANCHE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONG, by                    
First Line: Three score and ten by common calculation
Last Line: You've reached four-score, but haven't lived a day!
Subject(s): Life; Singing & Singers; Time


THREE score and ten by common calculation
The years of man amount to; but we'll say
He turns four-score, yet, in my estimation,
In all those years he has not lived a day.

Out of the eighty you must first remember
The hours of night you pass asleep in bed;
And, counting from December to December,
Just half your life you'll find you have been dead.

To forty years at once by this reduction
We come; and sure, the first five from your birth,
While cutting teeth and living upon suction,
You're not alive to what this life is worth.

From thirty-five next take for education
Fifteen at least at college and at school;
When, notwithstanding all your application,
The chances are you may turn out a fool.

Still twenty we have left us to dispose of,
But during them your fortune you've to make;
And granting, with the luck of some one knows of,
'Tis made in ten -- that's ten from life to take.

Out of the ten yet left you must allow for
The time for shaving, tooth and other aches,
Say four -- and that leaves, six, too short, I vow, for
Regretting past and making fresh mistakes.

Meanwhile each hour dispels some fond illusion;
Until at length, sans eyes, sans teeth, you may
Have scarcely sense to come to this conclusion --
You've reached four-score, but haven't lived a day!





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