"Youth" by Samuel Ullman (poetry reading)

This poem is better known in Japan because it was a favourite of General Douglas MacArthur who had a framed copy on his office wall in Tokyo. "Wireless" was a developed as a practical network for communication towards the end of Ullman's life. A Japanese businessman, Kenji Awakura, led a campaign to restore Ullman's former home: Read about it here:
http://main.uab.edu/Sites/UllmanMuseum/
and there's more here:
http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/al/birmingham.html

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.

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• Youth
• Samuel
• Ullman
• poem
• poetry

[nutherefurlong]

I know so many who are young in years who are old, by Ullman's definition.

[jmsimpson11]

beautiful

[sandratakakura]

I' ve read in a book that the Japanese version was translated from a poem based on Samuel Ullman's "Youth" . It was apparently given by someone called John Lewis to General MacArthur. You can find it in the book written in Japanese by Jiro Miyazawa...

[fadilozofi]

I LOVE HIS VOICE!

[00ogre00]

eleazar

[Poopaloo55]

@MrJosiebhoy

Brilliant...thanks for connecting me with this. 78 years of wisdom right there.

Optimism is the fountain of youth!

[MrJosiebhoy]

the most eloquent poem thats every been put on paper-beautiful and so true-god rest you samuel