In a good old age.
Old and well stricken in age.
She may very well pass for forty-three,
In the dusk with a light behind her.
Das Alter macht nicht kindisoh, wie man spricht,
Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.
Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true;
We're only genuine children still in Age's season.
Old age is courteous—no one more:
For time after time he knocks at the door,
But nobody says, "Walk in, sir, pray!"
Yet turns he not from the door away,
But lifts the latch, and enters with speed,
And then they cry, "A cool one, indeed."
O blest retirement! friend to life's decline—
Retreats from care, that never must be mine
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease!
I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
They say women and music should never be dated.
Alike all ages: dames of ancient days
Have led their children thro' the mirthful maze,
And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,
Has frisk'd beneath the burthen of threescore.
Slow-consuming age.
Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl—
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A smoldering hearth and a silent stage—
These are a type of the world of Age.
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done.
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
A green old age, unconscious of decays,
That proves the hero born in better days.
When he's forsaken,
Wither'd and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?
Tempus abire tibi est, ne . . .
Bideat et pulset lasciva decentius aetas.
It is time for thee to be gone, lest the age
more decent in its wantonness should laugh at
thee and drive thee off the stage.
Boys must not have th' ambitious care of men,
Nor men the weak anxieties of age.
Seu me tranquilla senectus
Exspectat, seu mors atris circumvolat alis.
Either a peaceful old age awaits me, or death flies round me with black wings.</poem>
Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For, howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five.
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.
L'on craint la vieillesse, que l'on n'est pas sur de pouvoir atteindre.
We dread old age, which we are not sure of being able to attain.
L'on espere de vieillir, et l'on craint la vieillesse; c'est-a-dire, l'on aime la vie et l'on fuit la mort.
We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.
Peu de gens savent être vieux.
Few persons know how to be old.
La vieillesse est un tyran qui défend, sur peine de la vie, tous les plaisirs de la jeunesse.
Old age is a tyrant who forbids, upon pain of death, all the pleasures of youth.
The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary,
And I am near to fall, infirm and weary.
