Ode to Maturity
I (Andrew, Strophe)
I
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t is now that time where you leave your house.
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What was a house will forever be home,
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But you will move on quiet as a mouse.
Now you’ve moved on and you start to roam,
Finding the beauty in everything new,
It all seems to be plated in bright chrome,
All of the new items start to accrue,
You begin to enjoy everything now,
You found the good part in starting anew.
Finally it is the time to avow,
You love life as lonely as it may be,
A fulfilling life these events allow.
It is this life that you truly envy -
At last you are in the land of the free.
II (Chinmay, Antistrophe)
The depart from your loved is hard to bear
As that mist of love will cease to remain;
No parents or siblings with love to share.
The thoughts of loved ones back home will bring pain.
Faces of family will fade away -
In mind, the freedom will not be a gain.
Old pictures will spawn fondness, yet dismay
The touch of a paper will not be warm-
The real thing is very far, far, away...
So as you sit in that dark college dorm,
You will anxiously wait for the day,
That you will meet your loved and end the storm.
That is the day, the sun will shine its rays,
Till that great day, all you can do is pray.
III (Matthew, Strophe)
Your parents, fam’ly, friends, they guided you -
But shackled are your legs to stringent law -
The time to guide yourself is overdue.
Your youth, your passion, all of it is raw;
A wondrous world of beauty, within sight!
From infancy, you must swiftly withdraw.
A burning confidence will soon alight
Consuming worldly knowledge all around -
A newborn eagle - finally in flight.
The ones that you love most, not to be found
Yet so much joy and opportunity!
How spacious is the footpath when unbound!
A breadth that spans the mountains to the sea;
Such jubilance in the land of the free!
IV (Alexander, Antistrophe)
But this freedom presents a hidden cost:
One which fractures your world and shakes your feet.
A man is a boy, but innocence lost.
The world is cruel - one cannot retreat
to their mother's sweet, familiar embrace;
One's independence often bittersweet.
Humanity no longer has its grace,
And one slowly loses his purity,
As the world reveals her actual face.
Murder no longer an obscurity;
The constant reports of appalling sin -
A gleeful, ”Welcome to maturity!"
Sadly, things can't return to how they've been,
Once you see the broken world from within.
V (Everyone, Epode)
In this broken world one learns to adapt;
For every soul faces this exact plight:
Once accustomed one no longer feels trap’d.
Only in fall, can you truly take flight;
Just don't forget after you leave the nest:
Your past is your own - don't try to rewrite.
Old friends may be distant, but don't be stressed,
New faces will provide familiar aid;
To fam’ly, you are still a welcomed guest.
Embrace comrades and kin yet to be made
And wisdom from your youth you should agree -
The future welcomed; past should never fade.
O, maturation, how you are the key:
To meld a yore in the land of the free.
