All those who find it hard to deal
With modern life and get perplexed
With innovation technological; who feel
Their memory receding with their hairline and will get quite vexed
If they can’t get a word, can’t find their specs;
With crinkled faces and with balding pate;
They cannot even send a text:
They’re getting near their sell-by date.

If knee joints didn’t ache too much we’d kneel
And say a prayer for massive cheques
To spend on renovations and the heating bill;
Discover why the DVD ejects;
Pay someone else to swab the decks
While we retire, watch TV, and vegetate;
Our duty done, England expects
We’re simply past our sell-by date.

Although we keep the Planet on an even keel
With our experience, they still portray us as a Hex;
Don’t listen to their cunning spiel—
Internalize their prejudice—it’s simply a pretext
To clear the decks—you know what’s coming next:
A lecture on the need to urgently depopulate
The Earth of those as wrinkled as Tyrannosaurus Rex;
They think we’re past our sell-by date.

Envoy

Prince, you would serve the common weal
By introducing death control, while those who truly serve can only stand and wait
For you to set a good example—from the cliffs at Deal
To lead the way; since you’re well past your sell-by date.

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We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an online journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts, and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson, Paul Elmer More, and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism. Some conservatives may look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.” The Imaginative Conservative offers to our families, our communities, and the Republic, a conservatism of hope, grace, charity, gratitude, and prayer.

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