Old Age and Ageing

Oh roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me Grown old before my time.

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night— We talked between the Rooms— Until the Moss had reached our lips— And covered up—our names—

Therefore I summon age To grant youth’s heritage.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

It is time to be old, To take in sail.

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king. 2

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

A lady of “a certain age,” which means Certainly aged.

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. “By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?”

The way was long, the wind was cold, The Minstrel was infirm and old; His withered cheek, and tresses gray, Seem’d to have known a better day.

Once a man’s thirty, he’s already old, He is indeed as good as dead. It’s best to kill him right away.

Age does not make us childish, as they say. It only finds us true children still.

How happy he who crowns in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

Unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years damp my intended wing.

The harbingers are come. See, see their mark; White is their color, and behold my head.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.

I have liv’d long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.

I am declin’d Into the vale of years.