Rodak Recites: Some Yeats

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Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbors figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell,
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.

WHY SHOULD NOT OLD MEN BE MAD? ~ Wm. Butler Yeats
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And while we're at it, although these lines may have been quoted so often that they no longer can be heard or register on the blunted minds of info-saturated cyber-addicts, here they come again, since never have they rung more true:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
xxxx~ W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
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