Cobbers And Quids

Is youth not less pedantic, less absurd, Less prone to value things of little worth In failing to wax wrath about a word That bears suspicion of a lowly birth? All words have known their low and vulgar days Known grime and poverty when they were young; And many a proud and pompous modern phrase Was once the plaything of a common tongue. But as we grow respectable and staid Mere sound, to middle-age, parades as sense. Grey slaves of precedent, we grow afraid Of youth and all its sane inconsequence. Forgetting words are no god-given things, With queer intolerance we would insist In terms to which the mould of ages clings On purity that never did exist. Language is not the gift of any god; Rude tribesmen made it when the race was young; And as around the weary earth we plod Still the illiterate enrich the tongue; And still while careless youth goes gaily rid Of age's caution, precedent and pence, Better a cobber who'll lend half a quid Than all the thrifty pedant's 'commonsense.'