Youth's Wild Passions

The time of youth is of extremes:

They lurch from wild hilarity

To gloom of great intensity,

Then down to depths of ennui.

This roller-coaster of wild passion

Is not we middle-aged folk's fashion.

We take a much more even strain,

Avoid the wild extremes of pain,

And frenzied bouts of tooth-gnashing.

Youths talk so fast it's hard to follow,

Yet their ideas seem often hollow;

As though it matters what brands you wear,

So long as you don't go about bare;

Which at times they almost do,

Even when it's freezing, too.

The initial g in gnashing is meant to be sounded.