The Grenada Gazette

THE GRENADA GAZETTE.

W. H. LADD, Editor and Manager

GRENADA, MISS.

PASSING THE BOUNDS.

To discover a sprinkle of gray in your beard,
And a thinness of crop where the upland is cleared;
To note how you take your slippers and gown,
And hug to the fire when you get home from town—
Ah, that's what it is to be forty.

To find that your shadow has portlier grown,
That your voice has a practical, business-like tone;
That your vision is tricky, which once was so bright,
And a hint of a wrinkle is coming to light—
Ah, that's what it is to be forty.

To find all the dreams of your boyhood dispelled;
And that you have toiled vainly where others excelled;
That your fortune is scanty where others abounds,
That you're only worth pence where you should be worth pounds—
Ah, that's what it is to be forty.

A sleigh ride, a party, a dance or a dine:
Why, of course you'll be present, you never decline:
But, alas, there's no invitation; you're not "young folks," you see,
You're no longer a peach, but a crab-apple tree—
Ah, that's what it is to be forty.

A daughter that grows like a lily, a queen,
And that blooms like a rose in a garden of green,
A dapper young clerk in an ice-cream saloon,
Both a dude and a dunce, is to carry off soon;
And a boy that is ten, and the pride of your eye,
Is caught smoking vile cigarettes on the sly—
Ah, that's what it is to be forty.

At twenty a man dreams of power and fame;
At thirty his fire has a soberer flame;
At forty his dreams and his visions are o'er
And he knows, and he feels, as he ne'er did before,
That a man is a fool till he's forty.

Ah, we're young and we're old, and we're green and we're gray,
And the law of our living is change and decay:
Come, see the lone spot in the Valley of Tears,
Where your baby lies low in the cradle of years,
When no longer on earth he is forty.

—Philadelphia Press.