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 strengthdecay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not—

Ah, 't is not what in youth we dream'd

't would be!

'T is not to have our life

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline.

'T is 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.

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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,

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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 quite
The phantom of ourselves,

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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

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1867.

Matthew Arnold.

WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID

RABBI JEHOSHA used to say

That God made angels every day,
Perfect as Michael and the rest
First brooded in creation's nest,
Whose only office was to cry
Hosanna! once, and then to die;
Or rather, with Life's essence blent,
To be led home from banishment.

Rabbi Jehosha had the skill

To know that Heaven is in God's will; 10
And doing that, though for a space
One heart-beat long, may win a grace
As full of grandeur and of glow
As Princes of the Chariot know.

'T were glorious, no doubt, to be
One of the strong-winged Hierarchy,
To burn with Seraphs, or to shine
With Cherubs, deathlessly divine;
Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod,
Could I forget myself in God,
Could I but find my nature's clew
Simply as birds and blossoms do,
And but for one rapt moment know

'T is Heaven must come, not we must go,
Should win my place as near the throne

As the pearl-angel of its zone,

And God would listen mid the throng
For my one breath of perfect song,

That, in its simple human way,

Said all the Host of Heaven could say.

1868.

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James Russell Lowell.

THE END OF THE PLAY

THE play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter's bell:

A moment yet the actor stops,

And looks around, to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task;

And, when he 's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that 's anything but gay.

One word, ere yet the evening ends,
Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
And pledge a hand to all young friends,
As fits the merry Christmas time.
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts.
That fate erelong shall bid you play;
Good night! with honest gentle hearts
A kindly greeting go alway!

Good night!-I 'd say, the griefs, the joys, Just hinted in this mimic page,

The triumphs and defeats of boys,

Are but repeated in our age.

I'd say, your woes were not less keen,

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Your hopes more vain, than those of men ; Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen

At forty-five played o'er again.

I'd say, we suffer and we strive,

Not less nor more as men than boys;
With grizzled beards at forty-five,
As erst at twelve in corduroys.

And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth May never wholly pass away.

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And in the world, as in the school,

I'd say, how fate may change and shift;
The prize be sometimes with the fool,
The race not always to the swift.

The strong may yield, the good may fall,
The great man be a vulgar clown,

The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

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Who knows the inscrutable design?
Blessed be He who took and gave!
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine.
Be weeping at her darling's grave?
We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
That darkly rules the fate of all,
That sends the respite or the blow,

That's free to give, or to recall.

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This crown his feast with wine and wit: Who brought him to that mirth and state? His betters, see, below him sit,

Or hunger hopeless at the gate.

Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
Come, brother, in that dust we 'll kneel,
Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.

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So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed:
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
And longing passion unfulfilled.