AS I GROW OLD If I live to grow old as I find I go down Let this be my fate in a fair country town May I have a warm house with a stone at my gate And a cleanly young girl to rub my bald pate CHORUS May I govern my passions with an absolute sway And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away Without gout or stone by a gentle decay In a country town by a murmuring brook With the ocean at a distance on which I may look With a spacious plain without hedge or stile And an easy passage to ride out a mile With Horace and Plutarch and one or two more Of the best of poets lived in ages before With a dish of roast mutton not venison or lamb And clean tho course linen at every meal With a pudding on Sunday with stout humming liquor And a remnant of Latin to puzzle the vicar With a hidden reserve of Burgundy wine To drink the President’s health as oft as we dine With courage undaunted may I face my last day And when I am dead may the better sort say In the morning when sober in the evening when mellow He’s gone and hain’t left behind his fellow FINAL CHORUS For he governed his passions with an absolute sway And grew wiser and better as strength passed away Without gout or stone by a gentle decay Paulina 1808 In Calliope, London, 1788, p. 58, this sing is called "If I Live to Grow Old.” And there it is the King’s health and not the President’s which is toasted in Burgundy wine. Source: Songs the Whalemen Sang, by Gale Huntington (Barre Publishers, 1964), pages 300-302 Melody transcribed on request - joe@mudcat.org
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