Who not content that former worth stand fastLooks forward persevering to the last,From well to better daily self-surpassed.Who, whether praise of him must walk the earthForever and to noble deeds give birthOr he must fail, to sleep without his fameAnd leave a dead, unprofitable name—Finds comfort in himself and in his causeAnd while the mortal mist is gathering, drawsHis breath of confidence in heaven’s applause.This is the Happy Warrior, this is heThat every man in arms should wish to be* * * * *A being breathing thoughtful breathA traveler between life and death,The reason firm, the temperate will,Endurance, forethought, strength, and skill.
Who not content that former worth stand fastLooks forward persevering to the last,From well to better daily self-surpassed.Who, whether praise of him must walk the earthForever and to noble deeds give birthOr he must fail, to sleep without his fameAnd leave a dead, unprofitable name—Finds comfort in himself and in his causeAnd while the mortal mist is gathering, drawsHis breath of confidence in heaven’s applause.This is the Happy Warrior, this is heThat every man in arms should wish to be* * * * *A being breathing thoughtful breathA traveler between life and death,The reason firm, the temperate will,Endurance, forethought, strength, and skill.
Who not content that former worth stand fastLooks forward persevering to the last,From well to better daily self-surpassed.Who, whether praise of him must walk the earthForever and to noble deeds give birthOr he must fail, to sleep without his fameAnd leave a dead, unprofitable name—Finds comfort in himself and in his causeAnd while the mortal mist is gathering, drawsHis breath of confidence in heaven’s applause.This is the Happy Warrior, this is heThat every man in arms should wish to be
Who not content that former worth stand fast
Looks forward persevering to the last,
From well to better daily self-surpassed.
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
Forever and to noble deeds give birth
Or he must fail, to sleep without his fame
And leave a dead, unprofitable name—
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause
And while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath of confidence in heaven’s applause.
This is the Happy Warrior, this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be
* * * * *
A being breathing thoughtful breathA traveler between life and death,The reason firm, the temperate will,Endurance, forethought, strength, and skill.
A being breathing thoughtful breath
A traveler between life and death,
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, forethought, strength, and skill.
There is a vast difference between old age as commonly seen and as it should be. The average type of humanity is undergoing a change. Civilization means city-fication and this involves a state of mind very different from that of the rustic. Worry has become the disease of the age as it was not formerly when man’s vegetative nature was stronger. It is amaladie des beaux esprits. We are no longer content to eat, sleep, and sit in the sun. The old always and greatly need grandchildren and it was never so hard to provide occupation for them, for their temptation now is to become self-centered, which is perhaps most common in women. It takes a different form in men superannuated by some automatic rule. Pitiful is the state of those who withdraw from occupations that have required and developed great mental activity.
The young, on the other hand, are less tolerant than formerly of the foibles and frailties of age. We live at such a high speed that it seems slow, if not stupid, and lack of sympathy adds to its burdens. The veryidea of the family is declining and there is little left of the old sentiment for the patriarch, so that “the faster we move, the wider must become the gap between the young and those who, like the aged, have ceased to move.” Indeed, old age “is probably less tolerated and less tolerable to-day than ever in the past,” for the old were never so out of it. It might be expected, as death draws near, that religious anxieties would increase, but the contrary is true. Youth was never so unable to apply the principleTout comprendre c’est tout pardonneror to make allowances. So it is the young who worry most about religious matters. “Absence of occupation is not rest. The mind that’s vacant is a mind distrest.”
If the man who has lived solely for sport is ill prepared to meet old age, he who has lived solely for business is still less so. He has had no time to cultivate his more human tastes but has developed his potentialities in only one direction and when superannuation comes his soul is bankrupt. He generally now has money as well as time to spend and so devotes himself to increasing his material comforts in a way that beckons death, because high living is no substitute for high thinking. He should discover the least atrophied of his powers and devote himself to their eleventh-hour development. The man of the modern nervous type should lay up treasure that age cannot corrupt. Herbert Spencer said the purpose of education was to prepare for complete living.
One of the most beautiful and normal attributes of old age is interest in the young, without which age is lonely and life becomes, as the preacher said, “vanity of vanities.” “If old people are confined to the company of other old people, they hasten each other’s downward course.” There was “even a certain psychological truth symbolized in the old idea that the company of a younggirl was the best means for the rejuvenescence of an old man.” “Never was the tendency to abandon old age to its own devices so strong as it is to-day.” Spencer thought the care of the aged by their dependents was the fit complement for the care that in earlier years had been devoted to them and regarded the imperfection of this return the great defect of our practical morals. Indeed, the author doubts “whether the aged were ever so much to be pitied as they are to-day.” The psychological needs of old age are greater than ever.
In hisHealth, Strength, and Happiness,107he gives an earnest, practical caution for all, but especially for the aged, to eat less; and particularly so in warm weather. “We dig our graves with our teeth.” Fat is hardly a part of the body at all. Flesh is really muscle, so that the fat man should be said to be losing flesh. “The whole secret of prolonging one’s life consists in doing nothing to shorten it.” The writer profoundly believes in government by the elderly in years and thinks that the really greatest works in many of the most difficult fields have been done by them. He stresses the fact that there is a certain kind of wisdom that nothing but age can bring. He sees the chief cause of senile degeneration in the hardening of the arteries, due to the necessity of disposing of superfluous fat. A man is really as old as his mind and he doubts whether we are producing more really living elderly men and women than did the ancient world. He is bitter in his condemnation of the common phrase, “Too old at forty.”
Bernard Shaw108thinks mankind is headed straight for the City of Destruction and can be saved not by eugenics or by a new and better education, as H. G. Wells opines, but by prolonging human life tocircathree hundred years. If the length of life were reduced to one-half or one-quarter of what it now is we may assume that our culture and institutions would decline because children could not direct them. It is exactly the equivalent of this that has actually happened, only instead of life being shortened to half or a quarter of its span the problems of life have doubled or quadrupled in magnitude and difficulty so that present-day man is not grown up to them. Trained only to run a motor truck, he is now since the war called on to be an air pilot, and this requires a long and arduous training with a great deal of preliminary selection or weeding out. Thus man must now simply either live a great deal longer or the race will go under.
This can be done and Shaw tells us how. It is simply by wishing and willing it intensely enough and for generations. Lamarck, the first creative evolutionist, devoted his life to the “fundamental proposition that living organisms changed because they wanted to.” They wanted to see and so evolved eyes; to move about and so grew organs of locomotion; the forbears of the giraffe wanted to browse on taller and taller tree-tops and so grew long necks, etc. All this was done by the same phyletic impulsion as now impels us to talk, swim, skate, ride a wheel, etc. We strive at it long and persistently and by and by, presto! the power comes from within because we will it, and it is never lost. In this same way man can and will acquire the power of living several times longer than he does now. As he does so he will put away his present occupations and interests, sports, amusements, party politics, religious dogmas, ceremonies, and indeed most of the things that now interest the populace, and come out into a new adulthood with vastly enhanced powers and a far wider horizon. Those who do this first will become pilots of mankind, which at present seems doomed for want of more wisdomand better leaders. Darwin and especially the Neo-Darwinians who believe in “circumstantial evolution” launched the world on a career of egoism in morals and mechanism in life that has brought it to its present pass and made it forget that all true evolution is from within, vitalistic, and voluntaristic.
Shaw’s drama opens in Eden, where Adam, oppressed by the conviction that he must live forever, first faces the fact of death in finding the putrefying body of a fawn. The gorgeously hooded serpent explains to Eve how she is to renew life by offspring from her body, and because of this she and Adam are assured that they need live only a thousand years. In the next scene Cain the Killer justifies his vocation.
In the second part, which opens in our day, two brothers, one a liberalized clerical and the other a biologist, agree that life is too short to be taken seriously and that neither of them is within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and wisdom they have been sincerely pretending to. To be a good clergyman or biologist requires several centuries. Man now dies before he knows what life or what science is. Indeed, life is now so short that it is hardly worth while to do anything well. Then a past and present prime minister, obviously caricatures of the two most famous men who have lately filled that position in England, enter and try—each according to his method and hobbies—to interest the brothers in one popular cause after another, but in vain; and are finally plainly told that they have not lived long enough to outgrow personal and local prejudices or to see things in their true perspective. The statesmen, failing to find campaign material serviceable for the next election in this new Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas, then ask for a prescription that will prolong their lives and, failing to obtain either, cease to be interested. It does not seem practical to found a LongevityParty and it might be dangerous to let everyone live as long as he wanted to. The statesmen are finally told that as they are incompetent to do God’s work He will produce some better beings who can.
In Part III,A.D.2170, The thing Happens. An archbishop, now 283 years old, is convinced that “mankind can live any length of time it knows to be absolutely necessary to save civilization from extinction.” Such lengthening may now happen to anyone and when he is convinced that he is one of these elect everything changes. A well preserved lady who appeared in a former part as a parlormaid but who is now 224 years old enters and discourses sapiently on the traits of the short-livers and complains that there are so few grown-ups. “What is wrong with us is that we are a non-adult race.” Her own serious life began at 120.
In Part IV we are transferred to the yearA.D.3000. An Elderly Gentleman, attired in very pronounced fashions that have not changed from our day, comes from Bagdad, now the British capital—London being only a park and cities being for the most part abolished. He is an amateur student of history and comes to revisit the home of his remote ancestors but finds it now tenanted only by long-livers who regard him as a child and chaperone and instruct him as such. At first he loquaciously vents his own opinions on a great variety of subjects with the utmost confidence but finally, under the tutelage of a Primary and a Secondary, and at last from contact with an awful Tertiary (for thus those in the first, second, and third century of their lives are known and labeled) he loses confidence, becomes more and more depressed at finding so many things he cannot understand, and has a serious attack of the “discouragement” that is generally the doom of all short-livers who visit these parts. In the end the aged Briton is so confounded by the wisdom that he cannot comprehendthat life loses all its attractions and he finally dies of exhaustion at the feet of the Oracle. Napoleon also swaggers and boasts upon the stage, but his ideals, too, are shown to be only characteristic of the short-livers and he is completely subjected.
Part V of this Pentateuch is datedA.D.31,920. Children are now born from eggs, clamoring to get out when about as mature as our youth are at seventeen, so that there are no children in our sense. They are grown-ups, according to our standard, at three or four. Art and science, after incredible labors, are at last able to produce two homunculi, a male and a female. They represent the consummation of circumstantial or mechanical evolution. They appear, talk, will, feel, apparently not as the reflex mechanisms and automata they are but as completely human. They have, however, almost incredible powers of destruction which they turn first against their own fabricator. So dangerous are they that they have to be destroyed because not truly human since they lack the creative urge from within.
This amazingly bold projection of Shaw’s imagination into the void is elaborately wrought out and needs very careful reading to be rightly appraised. Almost every reader will agree that he goes much too far in disparaging about all that modern man has done or cared for so far in the world as childish doll-play. This is its pessimism. Its optimism, which lies in the hope of vastly increased longevity and wisdom, will be thought to compensate, or to fail to do so, according to the temperament of the reader. The new dispensation, which is to come when man has grown up, for in the last part it is seen that he may live even 700 or 800 years, will be ushered in by those individuals who are most perfectly convinced of the desperate state into which man has now fallen but nevertheless profoundly believe both that he is worth saving and that he can be saved. GeorgeEliot’s way of prolonging life by giving to moments the significance of days will not do because great events often have no power to speed up but must evolve very slowly. The best type of old age as we know it is still too puerile to expect very much from.
Shaw’s conceptions of the old are neither attractive nor constructive but priggish because presuming on their years to demand respect for a wisdom that is nowhere in evidence. There is almost no suggestion that they have done anything to improve the material or psychic conditions of human life. No great inventions are suggested unless telephonic communication by tuning forks. These Ancients seem to derive their greatest pleasure from disparagement of their own youth and, what is far worse, of youth in general. The long-livers are cynical, addicted to sneering, rebuke, criticise, and do not inspire, construct, achieve, or even teach; in fact they only make the gestures and show the affectations of sagehood. They are divided in their counsels whether to exterminate the short-livers or to leave them to natural selection. Thus they are a class apart and we have almost no hint as to the stages by which they evolved. Now we are told that they are “elected” to longevity or achieve it as “sports,” while in the Preface it is insisted that it comes by a long series of persistent efforts.
On the whole, happy as was his choice of scene, fascinating as are these almost actionless conversations, the whole thing is ajeu d’esprit, with no message of practical import to our age or to the aged unless it be to slightly encourage the hope in the latter that by willing to do so more and more intensely they may add somewhat to their length of years. Shaw’s Ancients are simply a board of censors to carry out his own whims and who have grown arrogant as their powers increased. Altogether they are so unlovely that thereader would hesitate whether he would prefer to be a bloodless Ancient or to take his chance of being exterminated by them as a short-liver. The two Ancients in the fifth book of the Pentateuch, 700 and 800 years old respectively, are chilly, loveless, almost clotheless, sleepless, hairless creatures, happy in enjoying a wisdom of the nature of which we are given very few hints. They teach that all works of art from rag dolls to statues, and even to homunculi, are needless, and the intimation is that they are well on the way to becoming independent of the body, which they have subjected and which has lost all its attractions. We are not even told how the gigantic eggs from which the race is born at adolescence are produced. The final verdict of Lilith, the androgynous mother of our first parents in Eden, is that in giving Eve curiosity, which was still impelling the race to conquer matter and then resolve itself back into bodiless vortexes and energies, she had made no mistake for the Ancients are ever gaining in wisdom to comprehend the universe and, despite the slow decay of their bodies, are likely to attain the goal of achieving real but immaterial truth, beauty, and goodness all in one, so that she need not exterminate man and produce in his place a new and higher race of beings. Thus Shaw’s Ancients are the direct antithetes of Nietzsche’s supermen.
The poets of all times and climes have had something to say of old age, and vastly more of death. The latter has always been one of the chief themes of Christian hymnology and both its gruesome horrors and its consolations have found expression in countless tropes—sleep, harvest, crossing the river, and many others that are fairly burned into the consciousness of all who have come into contact with the church. Hymns have given the Western world ideas of death that the scientific descriptions of it show to be utterly false to fact, forthe dying almost never face death consciously, so that its terrors are generally quite unknown to those who meet it; while the cajolements that the Great Enemy has really been conquered in his stronghold and the supreme fear of the world banished, which, as I have elsewhere shown,109came to its most ecstatic affirmation at Pentecost, are no less fallacious. Thus along with its anodyne Christianity has invested death with a new horror of hell unknown to the pagan world. Moreover, it has always been taught as something exogenous or as a graft upon a more primitive stock and it is the latter that the psychologist chiefly seeks to know. Thus, excluding the more artificial reactions that have come to it from this source, I have reduced my first numerous selections to a very few that express the natural spontaneous repercussion of the three chief attitudes of mind regarding it.
The first is the death thought that always and everywhere tends to find its first expression in ingenuous youth and this has never been more fully and normally portrayed than in Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,”110which is familiar even to school children and which was written by the author in his ripe adolescence. This might have been composed in ancient pagan Hellas or even by a Buddhist as well as by a Christian, so generic and germane is it to human nature as it evolves. Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,”111while it shows vestiges of the same youthfulaperçusthat lingered into the author’s maturer years, is far more specific, more funereal, and really the farewell address of a dying soul to survivors. The euthanasia motive is far less pronounced in it.
The second attitude is illustrated by Matthew Arnoldand by the lugubrious phase of Walt Whitman, both written after decrepitude had begun. Poems written in this spirit arouse the question whether old age is intrinsically pessimistic or perhaps even pathological. Should senescents express or repress the inexorable and progressive limitations and weaknesses senescence brings in its train, or strive to ignore if they cannot be oblivious to them? Are not such abandonments to pathos, in their deeper psychological motivation, a cry for pity, to which strong souls feel it unworthy to appeal? Are they perhaps atavistic vestiges or echoes of a time when the old were more cruelly treated? Why spend time and energy in mourning for what old age takes away rather than in finding “joy in what remains behind” and which no other stage of life can give? Hysterical symptoms are often only an appeal for sympathy by those who crave, perhaps subconsciously, more attention and service, which only selfishness would think lacking. Psychopaths and paranoiacs have often made literary capital of their aberrations, as have adolescents out of the ferments peculiar to their age. All this has its place but should, in my opinion, always be known as what it is, namely, abnormal and aberrant and thus belonging entirely to science and not to literary art.
The third or reminiscent type expresses the inveterate instinct of the old to look back upon life, to illumine and interpret its memories by such philosophy as experience brings, in some measure, to all who can reflect. It is a happy circumstance that senile amnesia always begins with the loss of recent recollections, while those of early life are only later and very rarely effaced. This resource is always open to the aged, who can relive the most interesting stages of their early and adult lives, unify them, and draw the moral of them as a whole. The world owes much and, as it grows old, will owe evermore to the autobiographic impulse of those who achieve normal senectitude.
The following is Matthew Arnold’s “Growing Old”:
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 wreath?—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 notAh, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!’Tis not to have our lifeMellow’d and soften’d as with sunset-glow,A golden day’s decline.’Tis not to see the worldAs from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,And heart profoundly stirr’d;And weep, and feel the fulness of the past.The years that are no more.It is to spend long daysAnd not once feel that we were ever young;It is to add, immuredIn the hot prison of the present, monthTo month with weary pain.It is to suffer this,And feel but half, and feebly, what we feelDeep in our hidden heartFesters the dull remembrance of a change,But no emotion—none.It is—last stage of all—When we are frozen up within, and quiteThe phantom of ourselves,To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,Which blamed the living man.
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 wreath?—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 notAh, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!’Tis not to have our lifeMellow’d and soften’d as with sunset-glow,A golden day’s decline.’Tis not to see the worldAs from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,And heart profoundly stirr’d;And weep, and feel the fulness of the past.The years that are no more.It is to spend long daysAnd not once feel that we were ever young;It is to add, immuredIn the hot prison of the present, monthTo month with weary pain.It is to suffer this,And feel but half, and feebly, what we feelDeep in our hidden heartFesters the dull remembrance of a change,But no emotion—none.It is—last stage of all—When we are frozen up within, and quiteThe phantom of ourselves,To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,Which blamed the living man.
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 wreath?—Yes, but not this alone.
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 wreath?
—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?
Is it to feel our strength—
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more loosely strung?
Yes, this, and more; but notAh, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!’Tis not to have our lifeMellow’d and soften’d as with sunset-glow,A golden day’s decline.
Yes, this, and more; but not
Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!
’Tis not to have our life
Mellow’d and soften’d as with sunset-glow,
A golden day’s decline.
’Tis not to see the worldAs from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,And heart profoundly stirr’d;And weep, and feel the fulness of the past.The years that are no more.
’Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr’d;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past.
The years that are no more.
It is to spend long daysAnd not once feel that we were ever young;It is to add, immuredIn the hot prison of the present, monthTo month with weary pain.
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young;
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.
It is to suffer this,And feel but half, and feebly, what we feelDeep in our hidden heartFesters the dull remembrance of a change,But no emotion—none.
It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion—none.
It is—last stage of all—When we are frozen up within, and quiteThe phantom of ourselves,To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,Which blamed the living man.
It is—last stage of all—
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,
Which blamed the living man.
From Walt Whitman I quote the following four extracts:112
Thanks in Old Age
Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same,For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation.
Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same,For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation.
Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same,For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation.
Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation.
A Carol Closing Sixty-nine
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia falling pall-like round me,The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia falling pall-like round me,The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia falling pall-like round me,The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.
Queries to my Seventieth Year
Approaching, nearing, curious,Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?
Approaching, nearing, curious,Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?
Approaching, nearing, curious,Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?
Approaching, nearing, curious,
Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?
Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?
Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,
Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?
As I Sit Writing Here
As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,May filter in my daily songs.
As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,May filter in my daily songs.
As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,May filter in my daily songs.
As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,
Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,
May filter in my daily songs.
Longfellow strikes a less pessimistic note:113
Morituri Salutamus
Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at 80; SophoclesWrote his grand Œdipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verseFrom his compeersWhen each had numbered more than four-score years.And Theophrastus at four-score and tenHad but begun his characters of men.Chaucer at Wadstock, with the nightingales,At sixty wrote The Canterbury Tales.Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,Completed Faust when eighty years were past.These are, indeed, exceptions, but they showHow far the gulf stream of our youth may flowInto the Arctic regions of our livesWhere little else but life itself survives.* * * * *Whatever poet, orator, or sageMay say of it, old age is still old age.It is the waning, not the crescent, moon,The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon.It is not strength but weakness, not desireBut its surcease, not the fierce heat of fire,The burning and consuming element,But that of ashes and of embers spent.In which some living sparks we still discern,Enough to warm but not enough to burn.What, then, shall we sit idly down and sayThe night hath come; it is no longer day?The night hath not come; we are not quiteCut off from labor by the failing light.Something remains for us to do or dare,Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear.Not Œdipus Colonus, or Greek Ode,Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rodeOut of the gateway of the Tabard Inn.But other something would we but begin,For age is opportunity no lessThan youth itself, though in another dress,And as the evening twilight fades awayThe sky is filled with stars invisible by day.
Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at 80; SophoclesWrote his grand Œdipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verseFrom his compeersWhen each had numbered more than four-score years.And Theophrastus at four-score and tenHad but begun his characters of men.Chaucer at Wadstock, with the nightingales,At sixty wrote The Canterbury Tales.Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,Completed Faust when eighty years were past.These are, indeed, exceptions, but they showHow far the gulf stream of our youth may flowInto the Arctic regions of our livesWhere little else but life itself survives.* * * * *Whatever poet, orator, or sageMay say of it, old age is still old age.It is the waning, not the crescent, moon,The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon.It is not strength but weakness, not desireBut its surcease, not the fierce heat of fire,The burning and consuming element,But that of ashes and of embers spent.In which some living sparks we still discern,Enough to warm but not enough to burn.What, then, shall we sit idly down and sayThe night hath come; it is no longer day?The night hath not come; we are not quiteCut off from labor by the failing light.Something remains for us to do or dare,Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear.Not Œdipus Colonus, or Greek Ode,Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rodeOut of the gateway of the Tabard Inn.But other something would we but begin,For age is opportunity no lessThan youth itself, though in another dress,And as the evening twilight fades awayThe sky is filled with stars invisible by day.
Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at 80; SophoclesWrote his grand Œdipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verseFrom his compeersWhen each had numbered more than four-score years.And Theophrastus at four-score and tenHad but begun his characters of men.Chaucer at Wadstock, with the nightingales,At sixty wrote The Canterbury Tales.Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,Completed Faust when eighty years were past.These are, indeed, exceptions, but they showHow far the gulf stream of our youth may flowInto the Arctic regions of our livesWhere little else but life itself survives.
Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at 80; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Œdipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse
From his compeers
When each had numbered more than four-score years.
And Theophrastus at four-score and ten
Had but begun his characters of men.
Chaucer at Wadstock, with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote The Canterbury Tales.
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are, indeed, exceptions, but they show
How far the gulf stream of our youth may flow
Into the Arctic regions of our lives
Where little else but life itself survives.
* * * * *
Whatever poet, orator, or sageMay say of it, old age is still old age.It is the waning, not the crescent, moon,The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon.It is not strength but weakness, not desireBut its surcease, not the fierce heat of fire,The burning and consuming element,But that of ashes and of embers spent.In which some living sparks we still discern,Enough to warm but not enough to burn.What, then, shall we sit idly down and sayThe night hath come; it is no longer day?The night hath not come; we are not quiteCut off from labor by the failing light.Something remains for us to do or dare,Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear.Not Œdipus Colonus, or Greek Ode,Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rodeOut of the gateway of the Tabard Inn.But other something would we but begin,For age is opportunity no lessThan youth itself, though in another dress,And as the evening twilight fades awayThe sky is filled with stars invisible by day.
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent, moon,
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon.
It is not strength but weakness, not desire
But its surcease, not the fierce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent.
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm but not enough to burn.
What, then, shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light.
Something remains for us to do or dare,
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear.
Not Œdipus Colonus, or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn.
But other something would we but begin,
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.
I also append the following quotations:
At sixty-two life is begun,At seventy-three begins once more;Fly swifter as thou near’st the sunAnd brighter shine at eighty-four.At ninety-fiveShouldst thou arriveStill wait on God and work and thrive.It has been sung by ancient sagesThat love of life increases with yearsSo much that in our later stages,When bones grow sharp and sickness ragesThe greatest love of life appears.Hard choice for man to die or else to beThat tottering, wretched, wrinkled thing you see,Age then we all prefer; for age we pray;And travel on to life’s last lingering day,Then sinking slowly down from worse to worse,Find Heaven’s extorted boon our greatest curse.
At sixty-two life is begun,At seventy-three begins once more;Fly swifter as thou near’st the sunAnd brighter shine at eighty-four.At ninety-fiveShouldst thou arriveStill wait on God and work and thrive.It has been sung by ancient sagesThat love of life increases with yearsSo much that in our later stages,When bones grow sharp and sickness ragesThe greatest love of life appears.Hard choice for man to die or else to beThat tottering, wretched, wrinkled thing you see,Age then we all prefer; for age we pray;And travel on to life’s last lingering day,Then sinking slowly down from worse to worse,Find Heaven’s extorted boon our greatest curse.
At sixty-two life is begun,At seventy-three begins once more;Fly swifter as thou near’st the sunAnd brighter shine at eighty-four.At ninety-fiveShouldst thou arriveStill wait on God and work and thrive.
At sixty-two life is begun,
At seventy-three begins once more;
Fly swifter as thou near’st the sun
And brighter shine at eighty-four.
At ninety-five
Shouldst thou arrive
Still wait on God and work and thrive.
It has been sung by ancient sagesThat love of life increases with yearsSo much that in our later stages,When bones grow sharp and sickness ragesThe greatest love of life appears.
It has been sung by ancient sages
That love of life increases with years
So much that in our later stages,
When bones grow sharp and sickness rages
The greatest love of life appears.
Hard choice for man to die or else to beThat tottering, wretched, wrinkled thing you see,Age then we all prefer; for age we pray;And travel on to life’s last lingering day,Then sinking slowly down from worse to worse,Find Heaven’s extorted boon our greatest curse.
Hard choice for man to die or else to be
That tottering, wretched, wrinkled thing you see,
Age then we all prefer; for age we pray;
And travel on to life’s last lingering day,
Then sinking slowly down from worse to worse,
Find Heaven’s extorted boon our greatest curse.
Many a man passes his youth in preparing misery for his age, and his age in repairing the misconduct of his youth.It is easy to die but difficult to die at the right time.The danger of shipwreck is less in mid-ocean than near to shore.Time wears out masks; the old show what they are.The misfortunes of life are that we are born young and become old.
Many a man passes his youth in preparing misery for his age, and his age in repairing the misconduct of his youth.
It is easy to die but difficult to die at the right time.
The danger of shipwreck is less in mid-ocean than near to shore.
Time wears out masks; the old show what they are.
The misfortunes of life are that we are born young and become old.
Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made!What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me.Browning:Rabbi Ben Ezra.
Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made!What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me.Browning:Rabbi Ben Ezra.
Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made!What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me.
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made!
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me.
Browning:Rabbi Ben Ezra.
What is age but youth’s full bloomAnd retiring, more transcendent youth?
What is age but youth’s full bloomAnd retiring, more transcendent youth?
What is age but youth’s full bloomAnd retiring, more transcendent youth?
What is age but youth’s full bloom
And retiring, more transcendent youth?
Old men must die or the world would grow mouldy, wouldonly breed the past again.—Tennyson:Becket.
Old men must die or the world would grow mouldy, wouldonly breed the past again.—Tennyson:Becket.
Old men must die or the world would grow mouldy, wouldonly breed the past again.—Tennyson:Becket.
Old men must die or the world would grow mouldy, would
only breed the past again.—Tennyson:Becket.
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.—Disraeli:Coningsby.
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.—Disraeli:Coningsby.
See how the world its veterans rewards!A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.Pope:Moral Essays.
See how the world its veterans rewards!A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.Pope:Moral Essays.
See how the world its veterans rewards!A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.
See how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.
Pope:Moral Essays.
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.—Bacon:Apothegms.
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.—Bacon:Apothegms.
Dr. Clara Barrus, who for many years has labored in the closest personal contact with John Burroughs, has kindly sent me, along with much other information, the notes he made during the last months of his life for an article that he never lived to complete on Old Age. The quotations andaperçusthat he collected and that most impressed him were such as the following:
As men grow old they grow more foolish and more wise.Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint.A man at sixteen will prove a child at sixty.When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.Nobody loves life like an old man.An old young man will make a young old man.Old age is a tyrant who forbids men, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.Reckless youth makes rueful age.Young men think old men fools and old men know young men to be so.The evening of life brings with it its lamps.A youthful age is desirable but aged youth is troublesome and grievous.To me the worst thing about old age is that one has outlived all his old friends. The past becomes a cemetery.It is characteristic of old age to reverse its opinions and its likes and dislikes. But it does not reverse them; it revises them. If its years have been well spent it has reached a higher position from which to overlook Life; it commands a wider view.Old Age may reason well but old age does not remember well. The power of attention fails, which we so often mistake for deafness in the old. It is the mind that is blunted and not the ear. Hence we octogenarians so often ask for your question over again. We do not grasp it the first time. We do not want you to speak louder. We only need to focus upon you a little more completely.I probably make more strenuous demands upon him who aspires to be a poet than ever before. I see more clearly than ever before that sweetened prose put up in verse form does not make poetry any more than sweetened water put in the comb in the hive makes honey. The quality of the man makes all the difference in the world. A great nature can describe birds and flowers and clouds and sunsets and spring and autumn greatly.We in our generation have become so familiar with a universe so much larger than that known to the Ancients that we naturally wonder how the wise men of Greece and Rome and of Judea could have had or seem to have had so little curiosity about the earth upon which they lived and of which they were so ignorant.Cicero found that age increased the pleasure of conversation. It is certainly true that in age we do find our tongues if we have any. They are unloosened, and when the young or middle-aged sit silent the octogenarian is a fountain of conversation. In age one set of pleasures is gone and another takes its place.The old man reasons well, the judgment is clear, the mind active, the conscience alert, the interest in life unabated. It is the memory that plays the old man tricks.Names and places with which one has been perfectly familiar all his life suddenly, for a few moments, mean nothing. It is as if the belt slipped and the wheel did not go around. Then the next moment away it goes again. Or shall we call it a kind of mental anesthetic or paralysis? Thus, the other day I was reading something about Georgetown, S. A. I repeated the name over to myself a few times. Have I not known such a place some time, in my life. Where is it? “Georgetown.” “Georgetown.” The name seems like a dream. Then I thought of Washington, the Capitol, and the city above it, but had to ask a friend if its name was Georgetown. Then suddenly as if some chemical had been rubbed on a bit of invisible writing, out it came! Of course it was Georgetown. How could I have been in doubt about it; I had lived in Washington for ten years.
As men grow old they grow more foolish and more wise.
Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint.
A man at sixteen will prove a child at sixty.
When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
Nobody loves life like an old man.
An old young man will make a young old man.
Old age is a tyrant who forbids men, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Reckless youth makes rueful age.
Young men think old men fools and old men know young men to be so.
The evening of life brings with it its lamps.
A youthful age is desirable but aged youth is troublesome and grievous.
To me the worst thing about old age is that one has outlived all his old friends. The past becomes a cemetery.
It is characteristic of old age to reverse its opinions and its likes and dislikes. But it does not reverse them; it revises them. If its years have been well spent it has reached a higher position from which to overlook Life; it commands a wider view.
Old Age may reason well but old age does not remember well. The power of attention fails, which we so often mistake for deafness in the old. It is the mind that is blunted and not the ear. Hence we octogenarians so often ask for your question over again. We do not grasp it the first time. We do not want you to speak louder. We only need to focus upon you a little more completely.
I probably make more strenuous demands upon him who aspires to be a poet than ever before. I see more clearly than ever before that sweetened prose put up in verse form does not make poetry any more than sweetened water put in the comb in the hive makes honey. The quality of the man makes all the difference in the world. A great nature can describe birds and flowers and clouds and sunsets and spring and autumn greatly.
We in our generation have become so familiar with a universe so much larger than that known to the Ancients that we naturally wonder how the wise men of Greece and Rome and of Judea could have had or seem to have had so little curiosity about the earth upon which they lived and of which they were so ignorant.
Cicero found that age increased the pleasure of conversation. It is certainly true that in age we do find our tongues if we have any. They are unloosened, and when the young or middle-aged sit silent the octogenarian is a fountain of conversation. In age one set of pleasures is gone and another takes its place.
The old man reasons well, the judgment is clear, the mind active, the conscience alert, the interest in life unabated. It is the memory that plays the old man tricks.
Names and places with which one has been perfectly familiar all his life suddenly, for a few moments, mean nothing. It is as if the belt slipped and the wheel did not go around. Then the next moment away it goes again. Or shall we call it a kind of mental anesthetic or paralysis? Thus, the other day I was reading something about Georgetown, S. A. I repeated the name over to myself a few times. Have I not known such a place some time, in my life. Where is it? “Georgetown.” “Georgetown.” The name seems like a dream. Then I thought of Washington, the Capitol, and the city above it, but had to ask a friend if its name was Georgetown. Then suddenly as if some chemical had been rubbed on a bit of invisible writing, out it came! Of course it was Georgetown. How could I have been in doubt about it; I had lived in Washington for ten years.