Youth

The 27th Annual Meeting of the Japan Medical Society Fashion Therapy "Coloring the Life of the Mind" (April 4, 2000)
At the finale of
BGM who flowed when he read a poem translated by Mr. Masayasu Inoue and Keiko Samuel Ullman's "Poetry of Youth". Original music composed according to reading.


Youth Samuel Ullman

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.