By
Bryan Sanctuary age 18 1963
Physics be blasted, chemistry too,
What do I care if blue is blue,
Or red is purple under blue light
Or is that wrong, I’m never right
Who cares for maths, quadratics and squares,
Or trig or logs, tell me, who dares?
Or poets who lived way back when,
Who blackened a page with an inky pen.
So Dicken’s is great and Coleridge too,
And Chaucer and Milton, Houseman, (that’s true)
Pope and Spencer, or that’s what they’ve said,
But what’s that to me, they’re all dead.
English is hell, Latin is worse,
History has my eternal curse.
Commerce is crappy, biology grim
Book learning grinds one’s nerves very thin.
Give me a life to fool and to run,
To idle my time and lie in the sun.
Happy and active without any strife
That’s what I want from my life
Sailing and singing, shouting and fishing
Sat by the sea, whistling and wishing
Tossing a song, snuggling a girl,
Squeezing her softly, my soul in a whirl.
Racing a rod, risking my neck,
Foot to the floor, what the heck.
That corner ahead, can it be made?
Laugh if it won’t cause I’ll be delayed.
Travelling so far, seeing all things,
‘Frisco and Georgia, temples and Kings.
After I’ve been and seen all I wish
I’ll return to my home like a soft kiss.
Be happy I’m back and happy I’ve been
Like the horse who thought other grass was green.
Then after I’d travelled, loved and hated,
Lived highly and finely, caressed and mated.
After I’ve held the world in my hand
And laughed at the gods and cursed mortal man
Lived my young live fully and freely
I’d return and learn what life didn’t teach me.
Then contented to learn, happy to teach,
And give to the world all I can reach
Learn to be poised, and gallent at heart,
And finished with riots, not eager to start.
That’s life as it should be, gay when we’re young
Dashing and care-fee at places far flung
But after one’s youth maybe grow slightly cold
And work for a while before one grows old.
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