Old Man's Hope


Old Man's Hope is a poem by Allan Octavian Hume, the founder of the Indian National Congress, in which he sought to channel the zeitgeist of unrest prevalent in India in the 1880s towards a self-rule movement.

The poem

The text of the poem is as follows -

Publication and republication

Hume first published the poem in 1886 in Calcutta. A few years after his death in 1912, the poem was published again on 15 June 1916 in the Home Rule section of Annie Besant's newspaper, New India, which led to renewed popularity for a period.