Prose Poem “Youth” by Samuel Ullman

It’s the beginning of the year 2019. I will be one year older like anybody else! Usually at this time of the year, I feel exciting about new beginning, and at the same time, I feel anxious about uncertainty in the future. Don’t know if it’s God’ will or not, yesterday I came across Samuel Ullman’s prose poem “Youth”. The prose poem “Youth” emphasis on optimism and its challenge to remain true to your ideals. It also tells people that youth is simply the state of mind, not your real age. The poem is so assuring and encouraging. It will remind me the true meaning of YOUTH in the coming years.

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.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

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.