Classic Poem

"Life! length of life!' for this, with earnest cries,
Or sick or well, we supplicate the skies.
Pernicious prayer! for mark, what ills attend
Still on the old, as to the grave they bend:
A ghastly visage to themselves unknown,
For a smooth skin, a hide with scurf o'ergrown,
And such a flabby cheek as an old ape,
In Tabraca's thick woods, might haply scrape.
In youth a thousand different features strike;
All have their charms, but have not charms alike:
While age presents one universal face--
A faultering voice, a weak and trembling pace,
An ever-droppping nose, a forehead bare,
And toothless gums to mump his wretched fare.
He grows, poor wretch (now, in the dregs of life,)
So loathsome to himself, his child, his wife,
That those who hop'd the legacy to share,
And flatter'd long, disgusted disappear.
The sluggish palate dull'd, the feast no more
Excites the same sensations as of yore;
Taste, feeling, all, a universal blot,
And e'en the rites of love remember'd not:
Of if--through the long night he feebly strives,
To raise a flame where not a spark survives;
While Venus marks the effort with distrust,
And hates the gray decreptitude of lust.