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Title: On Seeing Mrs. K---- B----, Aged Upwards Of Eighty, Nurse An Infant
Author: Charles Lamb [
More Titles by Lamb]
A sight like this might find apology
In worlds unsway'd by our Chronology;
As Tully says, (the thought's in Plato)--
"To die is but to go to Cato."
Of this world Time is of the essence,--
A kind of universal presence;
And therefore poets should have made him
Not only old, as they've pourtray'd him,
But young, mature, and old--all three
In one--a sort of mystery--
('Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.)
Here young--there old--and now mature--
Just as we see some old book-print,
Not to one scene its hero stint;
But, in the distance, take occasion
To draw him in some other station.
Here this prepost'rous union seems
A kind of meeting of extremes.
Ye may not live together. Mean ye
To pass that gulf that lies between ye
Of fourscore years, as we skip ages
In turning o'er historic pages?
Thou dost not to this age belong:
Thou art three generations wrong:
Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries!
Go on to thy contemporaries!
Give the child up. To see thee kiss him
Is a compleat anachronism.
Nay, keep him. It is good to see
Race link'd to race, in him and thee.
The child repelleth not at all
Her touch as uncongenial,
But loves the old Nurse like another--
Its sister--or its natural mother;
And to the nurse a pride it gives
To think (though old) that still she lives
With one, who may not hope in vain
To live her years all o'er again!
[The end]
Charles Lamb's poem: On Seeing Mrs. K---- B----, Aged Upwards Of Eighty, Nurse An Infant
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