Growing Old

Matthew Arnold

1822 to 1888

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Track 1

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It is—last stage of all—
The years that are no more.
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
It is to spend long days,
In the hot prison of the present, month
And heart profoundly stirred;
It is to suffer this,
But no emotion,—none.
It is to add, immured
Is it to feel each limb
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,—
To month with weary pain.
Is it to feel our strength—
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
The lustre of the eye?
A golden day's decline.
'Tis not to see the world
What is it to grow old?
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
Which blamed the living man.
And not once feel that we were ever young;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
When we are frozen up within, and quite
Ah! 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be.
Each nerve more loosely strung?
—Yes, but not this alone.
'Tis not to have our life
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,
Yes, this, and more; but not,
Deep in our hidden heart
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?