Ralph Windle

When I was one and twenty,
And starting on my way;
And hopes were high, and plenty
Of promise in the day;
The boss was keen to tell us
The future’s with the young,
So come along, you fellers,
And climb another rung!

To gain a reputation
And mix it with the rest,
With prospects of a station
Up there among the best;
Work was the beginning,
Facing to the sun,
With everything for winning
When I was twenty-one!

Now, my big lament is
That things are not to be,
For current ones-and-twenties,
The way they were for me;
How might I have faced it,
To sense I didn’t matter,
Just another crude statistic
In the unemployment data?

Pain enough, I’d reckon,
To have known a job but lose it!
Yet straight from school to dole’s
The more obscene road if we choose it!
It’s time to be forswearing
These nostrums of despair,
The timidities convention
Has spun to dull the care.

Time to sound the trumpet,
Time to bang the drum;
No young lives for wasting
On a soul-less kingdom-come.
Time the young were getting
Their places in the sun,
From those who’ve been forgetting
When they were twenty-one!