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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Sexagenarius Loquitur
FROM our youth to our age
We have passed each stage
In old immemorial order,
From primitive days
Through flowery ways
With love like a hedge as their border.
Ah, youth was a kingdom of joy,
And we were the king and the queen,
When I was a year
Short of thirty, my dear,
And you were just nearing nineteen.
But dark follows light
And day follows night
As the old planet circles the sun;
And nature still traces
Her score on our faces
And tallies the years as they run.
Have they chilled the old warmth in your heart?
I swear that they have not in mine,
Though I am a year
Short of sixty, my dear,
And you are—well, say thirty-nine.
Sexagenarius Loquitur appeared in Conan Doyle's 1911 collection Songs of the Road.
It can be found in:
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Poems of Arthur Conan Doyle: Collected Edition. London: John Murray, Abermarle Street, W., 1922.
Best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle describes his poetic contributions in the foreword of his collected edition of poetry:
FOREWORD
IF it were not for the hillocks
You'd think little of the hills;
The rivers would seem tiny
If it were not for the rills.
If you never saw the brushwood
You would under-rate the trees;
And so you see the purpose
Of such little rhymes as these.
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