What Is It To Grow Old? Is

Alas! Is Even Love Too Weak To Unlock The Heart, And Let It Speak? Are Even Lovers Powerless To Reveal To One Another What Indeed They Feel? I Knew The Mass Of Men Conceal'd Their Thoughts, For Fear That If Reveal'd They Would By Other Men Be Met With Blank Indifference, Or With Blame Reproved; I Knew They Lived And Moved Trick'd In Disguises, Alien To The Rest Of Men, And Alien To Themselves - And Yet The Same Heart Beats In Every Human Breast!

Truth Sits Upon The Lips Of Dying Men, And Falsehood, While I Lived, Was Far From Mine.

Most Men In A Brazen Prison Live, Where, In The Sun's Hot Eye, With Heads Bent O'er Their Toil, They Languidly Their Lives To Some Unmeaning Taskwork Give, Dreaming Of Nought Beyond Their Prison-wall.

Is It So Small A Thing To Have Enjoyed The Sun, To Have Lived Light In The Sky, To Have Loved, To Have Thought, To Have Done?

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.