On Shakespeare's 'The Passionate Pilgrim', Stanza 12 Poem by Roy William Gotaas

Ideally, dear reader, you need the text of 'The Passionate Pilgim', Stanza 12, in front of you as you read this. If you can't find a copy, message me and I'll send it to you.

You’re wrong Will: you who only ever cloak your truthes
With tact toward your proud and spinster Sovereign.
You know it’s wrong Will: you who know the scales,
Loaded with lust and greed and power,
Are only ever balanced in content by love.

Was it your queen in Stratford made you write it, Will?
Was it assurance to her that a pair of fresh-whited, brown-yolked eyes
Could steal no moiety of her bard, his heart’s ache or his pumping blood?
Or was it perchance that some peach-skinned girl took home
In her swelling breast the glance you gave her back?
Well, Will, in either case methinks you do protest too much!

‘Crabbed age and youth cannot lie together’: Paah!
You mean they shall not if you cannot!

‘Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care’:
Oh silly Willy, it isn’t true now and I doubt
It was four hundred years ago!
Youth is anxious to please others and prove itself:
Age says you may take it or leave and knows
There is nothing worth proving.

‘Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather’.
You know as well, Will, as I,
A summer dawn presages a heated day:
Uncomfortable, enervating, irritable.
Youth is never cool, while age
Knows many ways to warm itself in winter:
Especially if its love be young!

‘Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare’.
Yes, Will and tempests blow through bare trees’ branches:
No harm done.
But your ‘brave’ full-leafed tree, like a ship o’er sailed,
Is born over and down by a modest storm.

Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short’.
Say it more truly, Will: age knows which way the wind blows,
While youth is ever too busy shooting the breeze!
Youth gabs all the time on anything and nothing,
Talking the more the less it knows.
Age saves its breath for what it knows
Is the very little worth saying or sayable.


‘Youth is nimble, age is lame’:
Which, Will, is another way of saying
Youth never looks where it’s treading and why man-traps work so well:
While age takes a measured step
And arrives the sooner and in one piece.
When your nimble youth dances, they’re treading grapes, alone:
When lame age steps the floor, it’s joy and foreplay, Will!

‘Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold’.
Oh weak Will! Did the rosy girl look you the invitation
And She-at-home had you so afear’d, you hurried past
And darest not look back?
Youth is so hot and fever’d, love drowns in lust,
Out of control, the climax quickly come and gone:
While age savors and prolongs each moment,
Missing no nuance, floating luxuriously on its back
In the warm, moist ocean: then rests, then swims again.

‘Youth is wild and age is tame’.
You’ve seen, Will, youth leap to its horse at the slightest urge
And gallop off in all directions?
Age calmly mounts its steed and rides directly home
To a warm bed where, especially if its love be young,
It mounts again and rides again.
What you name wild is futile: what you call tame is fruitful.
‘Age I do abhor thee’: so throw away the mirror, Will!
Look for your reflection in a fresh young eye!
‘Youth I do adore thee’: agreed at the last, Will:
I warm me at youth’s heat, my breathing freshened in her sweet scent.
Trading her the shield of my wisdom.
And if ‘my love, my love is young’
Then Death, I do defy thee; for when the shepherd comes,
Sooner or later, he must take me, waking or sleeping,
With a smile on my face!
Which is more than you had,
When you scratched this stanza, Will!