Changed

 Here, for no particular reason, is a poem by Charles Stuart Calverley which perfectly demonstrates what Pope called the art of sinking in poetry – also the perils of ending a stanza with a two-syllable line. 

Changed

    I know not why my soul is rack'd:
        Why I ne'er smile as was my wont:
    I only know that, as a fact,
            I don't.

    I used to roam o'er glen and glade
        Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
    And not unfrequently I made
            A joke.

    A minstrel's fire within me burn'd.
       I'd sing, as one whose heart must break,
   Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd
           To shake.

   All day I sang; of love, of fame,
       Of fights our fathers fought of yore,
   Until the thing almost became
           A bore.

   I cannot sing the old songs now!
       It is not that I deem then low;
  'Tis that I can't remember how
           They go.

   I could not range the hills till high
       Above me stood the summer moon:
   And as to dancing, I could fly
           As soon.

   The sports, to which with boyish glee
       I sprang erewhile, attract no more;
   Although I am but sixty-three
           Or four.

   Nay, worse than that, I've seem'd of late
       To shrink from happy boyhood — boys
   Have grown so noisy, and I hate
           A noise.

   They fright me, when the beech is green,
       By swarming up its stem for eggs:
   They drive their horrid hoops between
           My legs: —

   It's idle to repine, I know;
       I'll tell you what I'll do instead:
   I'll drink my arrowroot, and go
           To bed.

Calverley was a noted university wit and a brilliant classicist who, uniquely, managed to win the Chancellor's Prize for Latin verse at Oxford (whence he was sent down for misbehaviour – he was an extremely high-spirited undergraduate) and Cambridge. He was a keen smoker, and wrote a heartfelt 'Ode to Tobacco'.