The Seven Rages of Man

Trailing clouds of glory do we come When first our cradles do us home. Smiles beam down like gentle rays of sun As our parents on us do fawn. Their hopes are great,through love refracted But Fortune their hopes has oft redacted. Creeping to school like a lowly snail The bard has told the schoolboy's tale. But palaces of pleasure are now our schools Where mischief reigns and ignorance rules. April is still the cruellest month Where a teenager in confusion runneth Not sure of who he is or what to do And sees his life drift far askew. But once released into his brave new world To more temptation is his soul unfurled, Leaving him adrift in a bewildered state To take drink,do drugs and fornicate. Yestreen it was better to marry than burn in Hell Today no such union on him doth rest well And so his rod on different rivers he will ply In vain his spirit to satisfy. Time,the subtle thief of youth,does parade The body's restlessness to shrivel and fade And so of potions and pills he does partake To revivify his lusts the more to slake. In the foul rag and bone shop that is the heart His end is so different from its start. An aged man is but a paltry thing With his strength gone he cannot sing. Morphine denies his raging against the dying of the light And so at last he sinks into eternal night.