Poems About Aging

His golden locks Time hath to silver turn’d; O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!His youth ’gainst time and age hath ever spurn’d, But spurn’d in vain; youth waneth by increasing:Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees; And, lovers’ sonnets turn’d to holy psalms,A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:But though from court to cottage he depart,His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell, He’ll teach his swains this carol for a song,--‘Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well, Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.’Goddess, allow this agèd man his rightTo be your beadsman now that was your knight.

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee--Both were mine! Life went a-mayingWith Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young!

When I was young?--Ah, woeful when!Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!This breathing house not built with hands,This body that does me grievous wrong,O'er aery cliffs and glittering sandsHow lightly then it flash'd along:Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man Less than a span:In his conception wretched, from the womb, So to the tomb;Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears.Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest, What life is best?Courts are but only superficial schools To dandle fools:

We’ve trod the maze of error round, Long wandering in the winding glade;And now the torch of truth is found, It only shows us where we strayed:By long experience taught, we know-- Can rightly judge of friends and foes;Can all the worth of these allow, And all the faults discern in those.

Now, ’tis our boast that we can quell The wildest passions in their rage,Can their destructive force repel, And their impetuous wrath assuage.--Ah, Virtue! dost thou arm when now This bold rebellious race are fled?When all these tyrants rest, and thou Art warring with the mighty dead?

The leaves are falling; so am I;The few late flowers have moisture in the eye; So have I too.Scarcely on any bough is heardJoyous, or even unjoyous, bird The whole wood through.

Winter may come: he brings but nigherHis circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire Where old friends meet.Let him; now heaven is overcast,And spring and summer both are past, And all things sweet.

Years, many parti-colour’d years, Some have crept on, and some have flownSince first before me fell those tears I never could see fall alone.

Years, not so many, are to come, Years not so varied, when from youOne more will fall: when, carried home, I see it not, nor hear Adieu.

The more we live, more brief appear Our life's succeeding stages:A day to childhood seems a year, And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth Ere passion yet disorders,Steals lingering like a river smooth Along its grassy borders.

But as the careworn cheek grows wan, And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,Ye Stars, that measure life to man, Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath And life itself is vapid,Why, as we reach the Falls of Death, Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange--yet who would change Time's course to lower speeding,When one by one our friends have gone And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength Indemnifying fleetness;And those of youth, a seeming length, Proportion'd to their sweetness.

The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;So calm are we when passions are no more.For then we know how vain it was to boastOf fleeting things, so certain to be lost.Clouds of affection from our younger eyesConceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:Stronger by weakness, wiser men becomeAs they draw near to their eternal home.Leaving the old, both worlds at once they viewThat stand upon the threshold of the new.

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going,Crumbling away beneath our very feet;Sad is our life, for onward it is flowingIn current unperceived, because so fleet;Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,--But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat;Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing,And still, O, still their dying breath is sweet;And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft usOf that which made our childhood sweeter still;And sweet is middle life, for it hath left usA nearer good to cure an older ill;And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them,Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them!

When that I was and a little tiny boy,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,A foolish thing was but a toy,For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,By swaggering could I never thrive,For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,With toss-pots still had drunken heads;For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,But that's all one, our play is done,And we'll strive to please you every day.

"What, you are stepping westward?"--"Yea."--'Twould be a wildish destiny,If we, who thus together roamIn a strange Land, and far from home,Were in this place the guests of Chance:Yet who would stop, or fear to advanceThough home or shelter he had none,With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold;Behind, all gloomy to behold;And stepping westward seemed to beA kind of heavenly destiny:

It is time to be old,To take in sail:--The god of bounds,Who sets to seas a shore,Came to me in his fatal rounds,And said: "No more!No farther shootThy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.Fancy departs: no more invent;Contract thy firmamentTo compass of a tent.There's not enough for this and that,

The clocks are chiming in my heartTheir cobweb chime;Old murmurings of days that die,The sob of things a-drifting by.The clocks are chiming in my heart!

The stars have twinkled, and gone out--Fair candles blown!The hot desires burn low, and wanThose ashy fires, that flamed anon.The stars have twinkled, and gone out!

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 forego her wealth?--Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength--Not our bloom only, but our strength--decay?Is it to feel each limbGrow stiffer, every function less exact,Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not--Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!

"You are old, Father William," the young man cried;"The few locks which are left you are gray;You are hale, Father William,--a hearty old man:Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," Father William replied,"I remembered that youth would fly fast,And abused not my health and my vigor at first,That I never might need them at last."

"You are old, Father William," the young man cried,"And pleasures with youth pass away;And yet you lament not the days that are gone:Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," Father William replied,"I remembered that youth could not last;I thought of the future, whatever I did,That I never might grieve for the past."

"You are old, Father William," the young man cried,"And life must be hastening away;You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death:Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"I am cheerful, young man," Father William replied;"Let the cause thy attention engage;In the days of my youth, I remembered my God,And He hath not forgotten my age."

When all the world is young, lad,And all the trees are green;And every goose a swan, lad,And every lass a queen;Then hey for boot and horse, lad,And round the world away;Young blood must have its course, lad,And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,And all the trees are brown;And all the sport is stale, lad,And all the wheels run down:Creep home, and take your place there,The spent and maimed among:God grant you find one face thereYou loved when all was young.

My heart, I cannot still it,Nest that had song-birds in it;And when the last shall go,The dreary days, to fill it,Instead of lark or linnet,Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.

Had they been swallows only,Without the passion strongerThat skyward longs and sings,--Woe's me, I shall be lonelyWhen I can feel no longerThe impatience of their wings!

A moment, sweet delusion,Like birds the brown leaves hover;But it will not be longBefore their wild confusionFall wavering down to coverThe poet and his song.

Few, in the days of early youth,Trusted like me in love and truth.I've learned sad lessons from the years;But slowly, and with many tears;For God made me to kindly viewThe world that I was passing through.

How little did I once believeThat friendly tones could e'er deceive!That kindness, and forbearance long,Might meet ingratitude and wrong!I could not help but kindly viewThe world that I was passing through.

Welcome, old friend! These many yearsHave we lived door by door:The Fates have laid aside their shearsPerhaps for some few more.

I was indocile at an ageWhen better boys were taught,But thou at length hast made me sage,If I am sage in aught.

Little I know from other men,Too little they from me,But thou hast pointed well the penThat writes these lines to thee.

Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope,One vile, the other vain;One's scourge, the other's telescope,I shall not see again:

Rather what lies before my feetMy notice shall engage.--He who hath braved Youth's dizzy heatDreads not the frost of Age.

The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,(This is the end of every song man sings!)The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;And health and hope have gone the way of loveInto the drear oblivion of lost things.Ghosts go along with us until the end;This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and waitFor the dropped curtain and the closing gate:This is the end of all the songs man sings.

When I was young the twilight seemed too long.How often on the western window-seatI leaned my book against the misty paneAnd spelled the last enchanting lines again,The while my mother hummed an ancient song,Or sighed a little and said: "The hour is sweet!"When I, rebellious, clamored for the light.

But now I love the soft approach of night,And now with folded hands I sit and dreamWhile all too fleet the hours of twilight seem;And thus I know that I am growing old.

O granaries of Age! O manifoldAnd royal harvest of the common years!There are in all thy treasure-house no waysBut lead by soft descent and gradual slopeTo memories more exquisite than hope.Thine is the Iris born of olden tears,And thrice more happy are the happy daysThat live divinely in the lingering rays.

Forty years on, when afar and asunderParted are those who are singing today,When you look back, and forgetfully wonderWhat you were like in your work and your play;Then, it may be, there will often come o'er youGlimpses of notes like the catch of a song--Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along.Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!Till the field ring again and again,With the tramp of the twenty-two men,Follow up! Follow up!

Seven Times One.--EXULTATION

There's no dew left on the daisies and clover,There's no rain left in heaven;I've said my "seven times" over and over,Seven times one are seven.

I am old, so old, I can write a letter;My birthday lessons are done;The lambs play always, they know no better;They are only one times one.

O moon! in the night I have seen you sailingAnd shining so round and low;You were bright! ah, bright! but your light is failing,--

Long time a child, and still a child, when yearsHad painted manhood on my check, was I,--For yet I lived like one not born to die;A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking,I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertakingThe vanguard of my age, with all arrearsOf duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray,For I have lost the race I never ran:A rathe December blights my lagging May;And still I am a child, though I be old:Time is my debtor for my years untold.

"Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame!Las! le temps non: mais nous nous en allons!"

Time goes, you say? Ah no!Alas, Time stays, we go;Or else, were this not so,What need to chain the hours,For Youth were always ours?Time goes, you say?--ah no!

Ours is the eyes' deceitOf men whose flying feetLead through some landscape low;We pass, and think we see

Full happy is the man who comes at lastInto the safe completion of his year;Weathered the perils of his spring, that blastHow many blossoms promising and dear!And of his summer, with dread passions fraughtThat oft, like fire through the ripening corn,Blight all with mocking death and leave distraughtLoved ones to mourn the ruined waste forlorn.But now, though autumn gave but harvest slight,Oh, grateful is he to the powers aboveFor winter's sunshine, and the lengthened nightBy hearth-side genial with the warmth of love.Through silvered days of vistas gold and greenContentedly he glides away, serene.

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;My feast of joy is but a dish of pain;My crop of corn is but a field of tares;And all my good is but vain hope of gain;The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun;And now I live, and now my life is done!

The spring is past, and yet it is not sprung;The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves be green;My youth is gone, and yet I am but young;I saw the world, and yet I was not seen;My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun;And now I live, and now my life is done!

I sought my death, and found it in my womb;I looked for life, and saw it was a shade;I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb;And now I die, and now I am but made;The glass is full, and now my glass is run;And now I live, and now my life is done!

Dawn drives the dreams away, yet some abide.Once, in a tide of pale and sunless weather,I dreamed I wandered on a bare hillside,When suddenly the birds sang all together.

Still it was Winter, even in the dream;There was no leaf nor bud nor young grass springing;The skies shone cold above the frost-bound stream:It was not Spring, and yet the birds were singing.

Blackbird and thrush and plaintive willow-wren,Chaffinch and lark and linnet, all were calling;A golden web of music held me then,Innumerable voices, rising, falling.

O, never do the birds of April singMore sweet than in that dream I still remember:Perchance the heart may keep its songs of SpringEven through the wintry dream of life's December.

Snow and stars, the same as everIn the days when I was young,--But their silver song, ah never,Never now is sung!

Cold the stars are, cold the earth is,Everything is grim and cold!Strange and drear the sound of mirth is--Life and I are old!

Youth hath many charms,--Hath many joys, and much delight;Even its doubts, and vague alarms,By contrast make it bright:And yet--and yet--forsooth,I love Age as well as Youth!

Well, since I love them both,The good of both I will combine,--In women, I will look for Youth,And look for Age, in wine:And then--and then--I'll blessThis twain that gives me happiness!