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