When You Are Old

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

Mother and Baby

Jan Vermeer

Girl with Ear Ring

Paul Chabas

September Morn

James Abbot McNeil Whistler

Arrangement in Grey and Black:
Portrait of the Painter’s Mother

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

Ripening

Thomas Hart Benton

The Lord is My Shepard

Ripening

The longer we are together
the larger death grows around us.
How many we know by now
who are dead! We, who were young,
now count the cost of having been.
And yet as we know the dead
we grow familiar with the world.
We, who were young and loved each other
ignorantly, now come to know
each other in love, married
by what we have done, as much
as by what we intend. Our hair
turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!

~ Wendell Berry ~

We’ll Go No More A-roving

Toulouse Lautrec

In the Salon of the Rue-des-moulins

We’ll Go No More A-roving

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

~ Lord Byron ~

Growing Old

Diego Rivera

Los Viejos

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 for 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 weakly 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.

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.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

Ferdinand Hodler

Old Man Sitting

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death

not a clean and inbetween

the sheets holywater death

not a famous-last-words

peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73

and in constant good tumour

may I be mown down at dawn

by a bright red sports car

on my way home

from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91

with silver hair

and sitting in a barber's chair

may rival gangsters

with hamfisted tommyguns burst in

and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104

and banned from the Cavern

may my mistress

catching me in bed with her daughter

and fearing for her son

cut me up into little pieces

and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death

not a free from sin tiptoe in

candle wax and waning death

not a curtains drawn by angels borne

'what a nice way to go' death

~ Roger McGough ~

Sad Walk

Edward Hopper

Early Sunday Morning

Sad Walk

I’ve come to the old echoes again,

know it’s where I’ve been before,

see the same old sun.

But backwards, from all the yesterdays,

it’s still the same way,

who gets and who pays.

I was younger then,

walking along still open,

young and having fun.

But now it’s just a sad walk

to an empty park,to sit down and wait, wait to get out.

~ Robert Creeley ~

The Little Boy and the Old Man

Pablo Picasso

The Old Beggar and Boy

The Little Boy and the Old Man

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."

Said the old man, "I do that too."

The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."

"I do that too," laughed the little old man.

Said the little boy, "I often cry."

The old man nodded, "So do I."

"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems

Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.

"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

~ Shel Silverstein ~

An Old Song

Pablo Picasso

The Old Blind Guitarist

An Old Song

If only

I may have,

at death,

a friend's hand

laid upon

my forehead.

~ Tomaz Salamun ~

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

Caspar David Friedrich

The Tree of Crows

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,

I’d like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I’ll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:

"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

~ Antonio Machado ~

The Selfsame Song

Anonymous Egyptian

Sycamore Tree

The Selfsame Song

A bird sings the selfsame song,

With never a fault in its flow,

That we listened to here those long

Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how

A strain of such rapturous rote

Should have gone on thus till now

unchanged in a note!

--But its not the selfsame bird.--

No: perished to dust is he....

As also are those who heard

That song with me.

~ Thomas Hardy ~

My Prime of Youth Is But a Frost of Cares

Paul Baudry

Charlotte Corday

Alfred Dehodencq

The Arrest of Charlotte Corday

My Prime of Youth Is But a Frost of Cares

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,

My crop of corn is but a field of tares,

And all my good is but vain hope of gain.

The day is gone and I yet I saw no sun,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung,

The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,

My youth is gone, and yet I am but young,

I saw the world, and yet I was not seen,

My thread is cut, and yet it was not spun,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,

I look't for life and saw it was a shade,

I trode the earth and knew it was my tomb,

And now I die, and now I am but made.

The glass is full, and now the glass is run,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

~ Chidiock Tichborne ~