Maggie's Farm

Image is Turner's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1823)

A "childe" is a youth on the career track to become a knight. Our Massachusetts Maine friend Sipp brought Byron's (George Gordon, Lord Byron) masterpiece Childe Harold to mind with his killer quote from Canto 3 of the epic:

He who, grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below
Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul's haunted cell.

The entire narrative poem is here, but is best read in dead tree form. Better yet, read out loud. Lord Byron, like Dylan and Sippican and a bunch of other special people, has (or is, or was) an Old Soul - regardless of age. It's a gift - or maybe a curse. Maybe both.