Having gone a year or two past sixty,
I shall range upon the high plateau of my life and capacity for a few years,
Then reach a viaduct called, The Turn in Life,
Which, if crossed in safety, leads to the valley of old age—
And then swiftly descend.

In youth and maturity poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp of day. But as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous still included,) the dusk becomes the poet’s atmosphere.
I too have sought, and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according,
But as I grow old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat,
The half-lights of evening are far more to me,
And now, after surmounting three-score and ten,
With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,
I chant old age.

Writing here in sickness, poverty, and old age, alarm’d, uncertain,
Batter’d, wreck’d, sore, sicken’d, stiff with many toils,
Fearfully weak, toppling, full of defections,
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
I have substantially gone out of business.

I used to feel that I was to irradiate, or emanate, buoyancy and health. But it came to me in time that I was not to attempt to live up to the reputation I had, or to my own idea of what my programme should be, but to give out or express what I really was, and, if I felt like the devil, to say so! And I have become more and more confirmed in this.

I sit here and wait. What else can I do? I do not suffer any pain. But I have been growing feebler quite rapidly for a year, failing more and more each successive season. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; now can’t walk around hardly from one room to the next, the paralysis never lifting entirely.  I am not getting prizes for agility—foot-races—any longer!
My lassitude is one of the worst points in my condition. It seems to me as though a great numbness, an inertia, had come over me. It’s funny how unambitious my body is; I am like a wet rag, possessed of an incredible inclination to flop.

Being kept indoor for most nine months begins to tell on me—an outdoor man serving an indoor sentence. It is wearisome, almost sad, to be confined in this way, imprisoned for days, months, years, always striving to endure with patience what time has at last reduced me to, as though I were some old hulk, thrown up on the shores of time. “The Dismantled Ship,” the picture, that’s me—that’s my old hulk—laid up at last, no good any more.
This late-years palsied old shorn condition of me is much like some hard-cased, dilapidated, grim, ancient shell-fish or time-bang’d conch. One of the worst signs is my eyes; my eyes plainly warn me they are dimming—they seem to be going back on me entirely.

Listen, and the old will speak a chronicle for the young:
Ah, youth! thou art one day coming to be old, too; for an hour, dream thyself old. Realize, in thy thoughts and consciousness, that vigor and strength are subdued in thy sinews—that the color of the shroud is liken’d in thy very hairs—that all those leaping desires, luxurious hopes, beautiful aspirations, and proud confidences of thy younger life have long been buried (a funeral for the better part of thee) in that grave which must soon close over thy tottering limbs.

Why is it, just when a man gets his height, his purpose, begins to live, comes the thwarting signs, the hedging-ins, the breakups, the ending? Why is it?

More and more as I grow old do I see the futility of calculation,
Try not to get into the habit of expecting certain things at certain times,
Of planning for tomorrows—the eternal tomorrows—
That never come quite as we arrange for them;
I have got beyond the point where I make the least calculation for the morrow—for any morrow.

One day is in turn followed by another, which in due course gives way to its successor. My thoughts come and go without apparent fret or loss. I retain my mentality intact, unimpaired absolutely, with about the same mentality as ever, with the exception of its being slower than formerly. I cannot think with the facility of those other days. The spirit does not seem to move me. This sense of mental obscurity never seems to leave me.

I am always sitting here, now reading, sometimes writing. I may not be able to bring forth any more books, but I still try to work a little; I still write whenever the spirit moves me. I really have not much writing to do—and what I do tends to keep me out of mischief.
These are all bad days now, but when they are only half bad I like to scribble yet, or at least go through the motions. It is not much—old age echoes, reverberant, an aftermath—but I am hopeful. Only the resolve to keep up, and on, and to add a remnant, and even perhaps obstinately see what failing powers and decay may contribute too, have produced it.

Yet look at me—here I sit gossiping in the early candle-light of old age,
Sitting here all my days now, talking, talking, talking,
Like a dictionary with legs on and a mouth.
I am getting to be a sort of monologuer,
It is a disease that grows on a man who has no legs to walk on.
Not my least burden is that dullness of the years, querilities, ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, may filter in my daily songs. My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and being chain’d to a chair—as never before. 

Years with all their events pass for me,
Each in its due order comes and goes,
I pass through the years, and become old,
And then a message for me comes:
A fellow might get melancholy seeing himself in such a mirror,
But we can see through as well as in the mirrors when the test comes.
Though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven,
That which we are, we are,
The same old man and soul—the same old aspirations, and the same content.

When a man gets old he has confirmed habits, has ways of his own,
Which the winds blowing however hard or righteously could not displace,
They are his to last out his life.
I still wish to be, am, the radical of my stronger days,
To be the same uncompromising oracle of democracy,
To maintain undimmed the light of my deepest faith;
I am sure I have not gone back on that—sure, sure.

As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply after battle,
The body wreck’d, old, poor, and paralyzed,
The strange inertia falling pall-like round me,
Today at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here, with vital voice.
A soldier has to go through what lies before him. One has to obey orders, and do duty, and face the music till he gets formal dismissal—and may as well come up to the scratch smiling. So I have made up my mind to be cheerful; we old fellows mustn’t become growlers!

Am I, as some think, losing grip? No—no—no, I am sure that could not be. I tried to take things easy, and to take them as they come, and I seem to have succeeded, for in some respects I seem to feel better and stronger than I did at my last birthday. Feeling fairly these days, and even jovial—sleep and appetite good enough to be thankful for. I am satisfied and comfortable and often bless the Lord that things are as well with me as they are, for they might be much worse. I have been wonderfully favoured all through, in everything.

Now, in these late days, as I look back upon the past, I can see that, in a sense, my misfortunes have been my fortunes—that it must have been altogether right for me to have travelled a rough, hard road—so to be tested, at last secured! Though I feel like an old wagon which can never again jog across the woods to camp meeting over corduroy roads, still I can get on over smooth roads.

But I take on the usual privilege of years—to go slow, to be less vehement, to trust more to quiet, to composure. I was a great deal more vehement years ago than I am now.
I have now removed the greatest bar that once stood between me and happiness; that was a fiery temper, swell’d like an overflowing torrent. I have lost that now. Inherently I have a bad temper—but I have nearly perfect control of it—I am its master, not it mine. My passions are all ready for action, I boil, burn up, but often I keep my mouth shut.

As life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all,
The brooding and blissful halcyon days.

I am sitting here alone; I have myself for company, such as it is, anyhow, and I am used to being alone. (I have always had an idea that I should some day move off—finish my life in isolation at the last, after my fires were spent.) I get along sort of comfortable, in good heart and good spirits invariably.

The great thing with me is the spirit; old as I am my spirits are first-rate, my spirit is tremenjuous—thanks to myself in part, thanks in part to an occasional sip of sherry!
The passing hours are so sunny-fine,
I feel today almost a part of some frolicsome wave,
Or for sporting yet like a kid or kitten.
Reader, you must allow a little fun here. When a man gets old and his fires slow down some, some touch of (never much) stimulant may be necessary.

But the main things are a pretty good (born) heart and stalwart genesis, constitution—
Somewhere within this gray-blurr’d old shell,
Good spirits and primal buoyant center-pulses down there deep.
I inherit buoyancy from my parents and I suppose there is some of it left,
I believe I have it in me perennially anyhow;
My unwavering buoyancy and good-natured balance—
This splendid fund of personal equanimity and good spirits—
Has remained inexhaustible.
(As I grow old, I am less afraid to be egotist. It arises out of more positive if not new convictions. I know no one who has so heroically accepted that phase.)

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,
Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
Who are the groups of old men going slowly?
Three old men slowly pass, followed by three others, and they by three others,
They are beautiful; the one in the middle of each group holds his companions by the hand,
As they walk, they give out perfume wherever they walk.

Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them—
The admirable sight of the perfect old man, over eighty years old,
A man of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, whose life has been magnificently developed,
You would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him,
You would wish to sit by him that you and he might touch each other.

Or the perfect old woman,
A hale old woman, full of cheer as of years, who has raised a brood of hearty children—
I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable mother,
How clear is my mind, how all people draw nigh to me!
What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?
What attractions are these beyond the attraction of my youth?
O ripen’d joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!

Gentle old face, and the silver hair so smoothly folded,
How graceful she looks in her old age,
Arriving at last at the period of rest, content, contemplation,
What a calm serene bearing,
I know of nothing more beautiful, inspiring, significant.

Not summer’s zones alone—not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone—
Let me welcome chilling drifts,
E’en the profoundest chill, as now, the cumulus of years,
Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay, (cold, cold, O cold!)
Held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice,
The body, sluggish, aged, cold, the light in the eye grown cold and dim,
These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet, a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d—
These with gay heart I also sing,
Forth from these snowy hairs keep up yet the lilt.

To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets,
To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt, to truly understand—
To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.
The rarest and most blessed quality of transcendent noble poetry (as of law, and of the profoundest wisdom and æstheticism) is from sane, completed, vital, capable old age,
A sort of matured, superb, almost divine, invisible magnetism, dissolving and embracing all.

I often ask myself, is this expression of the life of an old man consonant with the fresher, earlier delvings, faiths, hopes, stated in the original “Leaves”? I have my doubts—minor doubts—but somehow I decide the case finally on my own side. It belongs to the scheme of the book. My verses, written first for the summer’s, autumn’s spread, I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses winter-cool’d the same.

You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,
You tokens diminute and lorn,
You pennants valueless—you over-stay’d of time,
Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,
The faithfulest—hardiest—last,
Haply for some sunny day (who knows?), some future spring.

Think not we give out yet,
While the heart pants, life glows,
The jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct;
The embers left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.

The touch of flame—the illuminating fire—the loftiest look at last,
Old age’s lambent peaks, the lights indeed from them,
So much in the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan,
Brought out by them alone—so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d before,
Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences,
The calmer sight—the golden setting, clear and broad.

O the old manhood of me, old age superbly rising, my noblest joy of all,
My children and grandchildren, my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
Old age, I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea,
Calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
And the approach of—but I must not say it yet.

NEXT: APPROACHING DEATH

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