Read "Youth and Folly" by Robert Graves online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
("_Life is a very awful thing! You young fellows are too busy being / jolly to realize the folly of your lives._" / -- _A Charterhouse Sermon_)
In Chapel often when I bawl / The hymns, to show I'm musical, / With bright eye and cheery voice / Bidding Christian folk rejoice, / Shame be it said, I've not a thought / Of the One Being whom I ought / To worship: with unwitting roar / Other godheads I adore. / I celebrate the Gods of Mirth / And Love and Youth and Springing Earth, / Bacchus, beautiful, divine, / Gulping down his heady wine, / Dear Pan piping in his hollow, / Fiery-headed King Apollo / And rugged Atlas all aloof / Holding up the purple roof.