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,