A rather appropriate piece of poetry from my school days?

After the responses that I had yesterday to my blog entry about the latest issue of MINIATURE WARGAMES, I was suddenly put in mine of a piece of poetry I had to read when I was at secondary school during the 1960s. It was written by Lewis Carroll, and was entitled YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM:

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –
Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
“I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –
Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –
What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”
Well, by that standards of the time when this poem was written in 1865, I am old. My hair is greying (I like to think that it gives me the look of someone who has a bit of gravitas!) and I am certainly fat ... although by modern standards, not uncommonly! (And I've never been able to back-somersault, even in my youth!) I can say that all my teeth are my own ... although some of them do come out at night and grin at me! As to the strength of my jaws being the result of 'discussions' with my wife ... well, I'll let her have the final word on that topic!

If I had the time or the ability, I might feel inclined to write an ageing wargamer's version of Lewis Carroll's poem, but I've got some 20mm-scale German Second World War figures on my worktable awaiting renovation ...