Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/253

Rh GROWING OLD.

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 limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not, Ah! 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be. 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,— A golden day's decline.

'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more.

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 feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion,—none.