I just found a post that J. Randall Short put up in June. He wrote about the Birmingham Boys Choir performing in Japan. He highlights one of the pieces they sang, which is based on the poem “Youth” by Samuel Ullman. I had never read this poem before. Below are the first and last stanza. Be sure to read all of it (and his comments) at his blog.

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind;
it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees;
it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions;
it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
…
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism,
then you are grown old, even at twenty,
but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism,
there is hope you may die young at eighty.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

Here’s to Youth, at whatever age.