Not Youth Pertains to Me

NOT youth pertains to me, Nor delicatesse—I cannot beguile the time with talk; Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant; In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still—for learning. inures not to me; Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three things inure to me; I have nourish’d the wounded, and sooth’d many a dying soldier, And at intervals, waiting, or in the midst of camp, Composed these songs.