Is youth not less pedantic, less absurd, Less prone to value things of little worth In failing to wax wrath about a word That bears suspicion of a lowly birth? All words have known their low and vulgar days -- Known grime and poverty when they were young; And many a proud and pompous modern phrase Was once the plaything of a common tongue. But as we grow respectable and staid Mere sound, to middle-age, parades as sense. Grey slaves of precedent, we grow afraid Of youth and all its sane inconsequence. Forgetting words are no god-given things, With queer intolerance we would insist -- In terms to which the mould of ages clings -- On purity that never did exist. Language is not the gift of any god; Rude tribesmen made it when the race was young; And as around the weary earth we plod Still the illiterate enrich the tongue; And still while careless youth goes gaily rid Of age`s caution, precedent and pence, Better a cobber who`ll lend half a quid Than all the thrifty pedant`s "commonsense."SourceThe script ran 0.005 seconds.
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