'The Superseded'

One or two things have happened recently which have made me feel my age, and be a little melancholy.    I seem to remember my own Grandma feeling the same at about my age and Thomas Hardy's little poem (1901) seems to sum it up ...

As newer comers crowd the fore,

We drop behind.

-We who have laboured long and sore

Times out of mind,

And keen are yet, must not regret

To drop behind.

Yet there are some of us who grieve

To go behind;

Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe

Their fires declined,

And know none spares, remembers, cares

Who go behind.

'Tis not that we have unforetold

The drop behind;

We feel the new must oust the old

In every kind;

But yet we think, must we, must we,

Too drop behind?

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