Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

A Prayer for Old Age

God guard me from those thoughts men think

In the mind alone;

He that sings a lasting song

Thinks in a marrow‐bone;

 

From all that makes a wise old man

That can be praised of all;

O what am I that I should not seem

For the song's sake a fool?

 

I pray‐‐for fashion's word is out

And prayer comes round again ‐‐

That I may seem, though I die old,

A foolish, passionate man.

‐ W.B.Yeats