A Toast to 2000

The century’s no longer new;
The years to come seem very few.
Twenties and thirties, forties gone,
And now the fifties rumble on . . .
No use to grumble or repine,
The century’s in its decline.

Now dawns upon the turning page
The fin-de-siècle, stuffy age.
Young men and maidens of this time
Will be the pillars of its prime;
These jocund children, bald and stout,
Will see its last convulsions out.

And we who saw the thirties through,
The hungry forties suffered too,
May linger, gray and comatose,
Within a few years of its close;
But not behold the strange new years
Charged with fresh follies and fresh fears.

Yet some Victorian, shrunk and thin,
Will see the year 2000 in —
With fumbling mind, but changeless mien‚
Will ponder on the dear old Queen,
Under whose reign he first beheld
The frightening world, and wisely yelled.

There will he sit like any ghost
And drink to that New Year a toast‚
Toast given by some pompous bore
At present playing on the shore.
Well may that centenarian fail
To grasp the meaning of the tale.