AGE.
Great men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment.—Job, xxxii. 9.
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you.—Isaiah, xlvi. 4.
Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.—Psalm lxxi. 9.
Now also, when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not; until I have showed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.—Psalm lxxi. 18.
They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.—Psalm xcii. 14.
That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness.—Titus, ii. 2, 3.
Ye gods! how easily the good man bears
His cumbrous honours of increasing years.
Age, oh my father, is not, as they say,
A load of evils heaped on mortal clay,
Unless impatient folly aids the curse,
And weak lamenting makes our sorrows worse.
He, whose soft soul, whose temper ever even,
Whose habits placid as a cloudless heaven,
Approve the partial blessings of the sky,
Smooths the rough road, and walks untroubled by;
Untimely wrinkles furrow not his brow,
And graceful wave his locks of reverend snow.
M., from Anaxandrides.
And next in order sad, Old age we found,
His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind;
With drooping cheer still pouring on the ground,
As on the place where nature him assign’d
To rest, when that the sisters had untwined
His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast-declining life:
There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint,
Rue with himself his end approaching fast,
And all for nought his wretched mind torment
With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past,
And fresh delights of lusty youth forewaste;
Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek,
And to be young again of Jove beseek!
Crook-backed he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed,
Went on three feet and sometime crept on four,
With old lame bones that rattled by his side:
His scalp all piled, and he with eld forelore,
His wither’d fist still knocking at death’s door;
Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath;
For brief, the shape and messenger of death.
Sackville.
So mayest thou live till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
Into thy mother’s lap, or be with ease
Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature.
This is old age, but then thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To withered, weak, and grey.
Milton.
O my coevals! remnants of yourselves!
Poor human ruins, tottering o’er the grave!
Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees,
Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling,
Still more enamoured of this wretched soil?
Shall our pale, withered hands be still stretched out,
Trembling at once with eagerness and age?
With avarice and convulsions griping hard?
Grasping at air! For what has earth beside?
Man wants but little, nor that little long:
How soon must he resign his very dust,
Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!
Young.
Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat
Defects of judgment, and the will subdue;
Walk thoughtful on the silent solemn shore
Of that vast ocean it must sail so soon;
And put good works on board; and wait the wind
That shortly blows us into worlds unknown.
Young.
But were death frightful, what has age to fear?
If prudent, age should meet the friendly foe,
And shelter in his hospitable gloom.
Young.
The seas are quiet when the winds are o’er,
So calm are we, when passions are no more!
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our youthful eyes
Conceal the emptiness which age descries:
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new lights through chinks that time has made.
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home;
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
Waller.
The fruits of age, less fair, are yet more sound
Than those a brighter season pours around;
And, like the stores autumnal suns mature,
Through wintry regions unimpaired endure.
Cowper.
Age, by long experience well informed,
Well read, well tempered, with religion warmed,
That fire abated which impels rash youth,
Proud of his speed, to overshoot the truth,
As time improves the grape’s authentic juice,
Mellows and makes the speech more fit for use,
And claims a reverence, in his shortening day,
That ’tis an honour and a joy to pay.
Cowper.
How pure
The grace, the gentleness of virtuous age!
Though solemn, not austere; though wisely dead
To passion, and the wildering dreams of hope,
Not unalive to tenderness and truth,—
The good old man is honoured and revered,
And breathes upon the young-limbed race around
A grey and venerable charm of years.
Robert Montgomery.
Youth, with swift feet, walks onward in the way,
The land of joy lies all before his eyes;
Age, stumbling, lingers slower day by day,
Still looking back, for it behind him lies.
Frances Ann Kemble.
Oh! Youth is firmly bound to earth,
When hope beams on each comrade’s glance:
His bosom-chords are tuned to mirth,
Like harp-strings in the cheerful dance;
But Age has felt those ties unbound,
Which fixed him to that spot of ground
Where all his household comforts lay;
He feels his freezing heart grow cold,
He thinks of kindred in the mould,
And cries, amid his grief untold,
“I would not live alway.”
William Knox.
He passeth calmly from that sunny morn,
Where all the buds of youth are newly born,
Through varying intervals of onward years,
Until the eve of his decline appears;
And while the shadows round his path descend,
And down the vale of age his footsteps tend,
Peace o’er his bosom sheds her soft control,
And throngs of gentlest memories charm the soul;
Then, weaned from earth, he turns his steadfast eye
Beyond the grave, whose verge he falters nigh,
Surveys the brightening regions of the blest,
And, like a wearied pilgrim, sinks to rest.
Willis G. Clark.
The aged Christian stands upon the shore
Of Time, a storehouse of experience,
Filled with the treasures of rich heavenly lore;
I love to sit and hear him draw from thence
Sweet recollections of his journey past,
A journey crowned with blessings to the last.
Mrs. St. Leon Loud.
Why should old age escape unnoticed here,
That sacred era to reflection dear;
That peaceful shore where passion dies away,
Like the last wave that ripples o’er the bay;
O, if old age were cancelled from our lot,
Full soon would man deplore the unhallowed blot;
Life’s busy day would want its tranquil even,
And earth would lose her stepping-stone to Heaven.
Caroline Gilman.