| Fuess and Stearns, comps. The Little Book of Society Verse. 1922. | | | | The Effects of Age | | By Walter Savage Landor |
| | | YES, I write verses now and then, | |
| But blunt and flaccid is my pen, | |
| No longer talked of by young men | |
| As rather clever. | |
| In their last quarter are my eyes, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| Just look at me! Could you believe | |
| ’T was once a lover? | |
| I cannot clear the five-barred gate, | |
| But trying first its timber’s state, | |
| Climb stiffly up, take breath and wait, | 15 |
| To trundle over. | |
| |
| Through galopade I cannot swing | |
| Th’ entangling blooms of beauty’s spring, | |
| I cannot say the tender thing, | |
| Be ’t true or false. | 20 |
| And am beginning to opine | |
| Those girls are only half-divine | |
| Whose waists you wicked boys entwine | |
| In giddy waltz. | |
| |
| I fear that arm above that shoulder, | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| Upon her high-heeled Essex smiled | |
| The brave Queen Bess. | | | | |
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