perpetual youth

Mid 19th century, two writers proposed two similar perspectives on youth.

"In that calm Syrian afternoon, memory, a pensive Ruth, went gleaning the silent fields of childhood and found the scattered grain still golden and the morning sunlight fresh and fair."

"Youth is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one’s life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though those five-and-twenty be spent in penury and contempt , and the rest in the possession of wealth, honours, respectability. "

Whether golden or weighed down by leaden troubles, childhood, youth, and the modern creation, adolescence, hopefully represent the good times. Yet at the cusp of the 21st century, something has gone awry. The innocence of childhood has been blasted away. Adolescence, the transitional phase of development, has been prolonged. Adulthood moves farther and farther on the horizon. Lost innocence, being unretrievable, portends sadness, desperation and restlessnesss the evidences of which already darken America’s cultural landscape. The perpetuation of youth, albeit in its perverted condition, means that today’s throwbacks, whether twenty, forty, sixty or eighty years of age, never grow up. How can our country, governed by unsettled hormones, both the white and black man’s burdens, achieve greatness in the future?