The Right of Youth

We were in love with life when we were young --
   We elders, groping in the maze we've made.
Youth was a promise, gay and garland hung:
And all that youth and energy we flung
   Into the surging stream of toil and trade:
Deeming this world owed us the right to live,
And what we asked and sought the world would give.
 
But what of those who follow in our wake,
   Robbed of the promise that is youth's one right,
Caught in the tangled web our follies make?
Age has a duty it may not forsake
   Lost dawn for them becomes as blackest night,
Holding no hint of all that gave us joy:
The dreams, the high ambition of a boy.
 
Age has a duty to all humankind,
   An urgent duty here and now to plan
For youth, lest he be left to lag behind
Till flacid thews and unambitious mind
   Make him a thing scarce to be called a man;
Or else our epitaph weak sons shall trace:
"The generation that betrayed its race."