Down Grade

Yes, boy, I know--you do not think; You only hear the glasses clink And feel the bogus joy of drink.

Life looks all Summer through a glass; The whisky road is green with grass-- But life and Summer both will pass.

It’s easy now to drink or not, To drink a little or a lot; But after all your drinking, what?

May it not happen ere the grave The thing you laugh at you will crave?-- The master will become the slave?

God! I have seen them: Boys like you, The frolickers of fighting crew, Who never thought and never knew,

Who took the road that dips and gleams, That runs ahead of singing streams (Yet somehow never downward seems),

With this same foolish passion played, The same old merry journey made, Who took the road of easy grade--

Till night came on, till sank the sun, Till shadows gathered one by one Around the path, and day was done.

’Twas then they turned; but now the hill Was high behind them, and the rill Within the valley dark and still--

Around, the level of the plain; Above, a rocky path of pain To climb, if they would rise again.

I am no preacher called to preach; I am no teacher fit to teach You younger men of better speech.

Yet I have walked the merry road Where laughing rivers downward flowed, And climbed again with all the load,

With all the load a man acquires Who follows after his desires Until he finds his lusts are liars,

Until he finds, as find he will, The peace, the joy, his age to fill He left behind him on the hill.

My preaching is not perfect, Jack; Yet truth, at least, it does not lack-- For I have been there, boy, and back.