Grandpa Sings to Himself

WHO else has sat so many evenings late
When feet and lells subsided overhead,
Brooding on the briefness of estate
And simple pities that he might have said.
It would be sad if we procrastinate
These openings of heart until we’re dead,
But prosody is hard to calibrate
Till everybody else is put to bed.

Then, elderly, distempered, and absurd,
With plentiful anxieties to worry,
He is as lively at the written word
As Pope-on-Thames, or Meredith in Surrey.
CROMPA (as they call him) finds it good,
And would he live it all again? He would.