WHAT is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forgo her wreath? Yes, but not this alone. Is it to feel our strength-- Not our bloom only, but our strength--decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more weakly strung? Yes, this, and more! but not, Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline! 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirr'd; And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are no more! It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young. It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion--none. It is--last stage of all-- When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN A RAILROAD STATION by SARA TEASDALE THE RUBAIYAT, 1879 EDITION: 18 by OMAR KHAYYAM MACGREGOR'S GATHERING by WALTER SCOTT SAINT TERESA'S BOOK-MARK by THERESA OF AVILA LINES WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD PSALM 35. JUDICA DOMINE by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE |