Matthew Arnold (1822-1888 / Middlesex / England)

I accept your view on our feeble form but reject your idea. Being old has black and white like any other stage. To me, when my body becomes weak and more care is needed, that will be the day when I can look under my skull and see the both the glorious and disappointed past in my life. That will be the day when I can say good bye to the world.

Some comments posted here are little more than trite and commonplace remarks from those who should know better. Grow up and take it like a man, Matthew my compadre! Stiff upper lip, you know! You ain't nothing but a loser! Do not assume that you speak for both you and me, professor! Pray for salvation, you old sod! And so on and on! These remarks directed at the ghost of the Arnold who wrote in another poem an elegy to the memory of a blind old poet named Homer who has been credited with composing both the Iliad and the Odyssey! Of course, nothing certain has been unearthed about Homer, except by scholars like Arnold and his ancient colleagues in 6th century BC Athens!

The experience of growing old will be as individual as people's lives are.

It all depends. I am 66 and have never felt mentally sharper in all my life. True the physical side decays, but the increase in 'wisdom' fed by long experience more than compensates. I have much less fear now, and view the future stoically. I am that I am whatever my age is. Arnold is making the mistake of assuming that everyone feels as he does. A poet should be careful and be able to differentiate between writing for himself and for the general.

Dear poet, don't you think by old age you should have mellowed much enough to face bravely death and get ready for your next birth by means of prayers and prayers alone....old age also means maturity

Growing old leads to loss of body shape, lustre of eye, beauty and losing strength! Not only that but also it is losing youthful dreaming nature, prophetic look from high level, having pain always, no emotion and living as a ghost till the end! These are the things that comes to the mind of Matthew Arnold and with that it ends! He has not touched upon maturity, wisdom, spiritual brightness and so on! It is just a mechanical composition of poem based on available facts ready in hand!

Read M.Arnold's Growing Old together with R. Browning' s Rabbi Ben Ezra, and you will find out the difference between a pessimistic attitude towards aging and an optimist one. The latter encourages me a lot, though it is very difficult to understand. (I read the Bible, for 'flesh' and 'spirit'etc., and E.Fitzgerald's Rubaiyats, for 'clod', 'pitcher', 'Potter's wheel' etc.) Oh, in Browning's words, ' How good to live and learn! ', and I think that means 'How good to grow old! '

Growing old is a natural process.Most of us were afraid of.The life we spent during our youthful days will still remind in our hearts eventhough were too old to remimber.So love yourself, enjoyed your life to the fullest.

This is a loser's view of growing old and very depressing. It dwells only on negative physical aspects and gives no positive balance as in becoming wiser through experience, knowing what is worth expending your energy on and having the time to do and delve into the myriad things you wanted to do but never had the time because you were doing other things like working and bringing up a family. You can still be a fighter right up to the end. There are ways of distracting the mind to make any physical pain tolerable. When you give in you may as well give up. this is not the way I intend to grow old. At 63 I regard myself as a mature youngster.

And on top of all that you can`t foxtrot any more