Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Walter Savage Landor 1775–1864

Time to Be Wise

Landor-W

YES; I write verses now and then,

But blunt and flaccid is my pen,

No longer talk’d of by young men

As rather clever;

In the last quarter are my eyes,

You see it by their form and size;

Is it not time then to be wise?

Or now or never.

Fairest that ever sprang from Eve!

While Time allows the short reprieve,

Just look at me! would you believe

’T was once a lover?

I cannot clear the five-bar gate;

But, trying first its timber’s state,

Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait

To trundle over.

Through gallopade I cannot swing

The entangling blooms of Beauty’s spring:

I cannot say the tender thing,

Be ’t true or false,

And am beginning to opine

Those girls are only half divine

Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine

In giddy waltz.

I fear that arm above that shoulder;

I wish them wiser, graver, older,

Sedater, and no harm if colder,

And panting less.

Ah! people were not half so wild

In former days, when, starchly mild,

Upon her high-heel’d Essex smil’d

The brave Queen Bess.