Views From the Mountaintop: Some Poetry on Aging

The old and the older can learn a good deal from poems.

Rally against the sadness of aging with the poem "Ulysses" and the comfort of others. Public Domain

Search online for “Is poetry helpful for seniors?” and we find articles pro and con on the benefits for older people of writing and reading poetry. Advocates say that composing one’s own poems or even just reading great poetry can enhance memory, lower blood pressure, and relieve stress. Doubters point out there’s no tangible proof that poetry does anything of the sort.

While it’s certainly true that no poet ever wrote verse for the purpose of preventing hypertension or memory loss, it’s also true that poets through the ages have helped us understand what it means to live and to die, to love, to hope and to despair, to walk through the sunshine and shadows of existence.

And what it means to grow old.

"Reading Man," 1909, by Albert Anker. While some believe that reading poetry can forestall aging, others note how its insights can urge us to age gracefully. Public Domain

Laughter and Joy

Some poets—and some of us old-timers as well—prefer comedy to drama in this stage of our accumulated decades. This inclination is understandable, for the wise among the aged know the great benefits derived from laughing at themselves and their own eccentricities, and at the world around them.

“Old Man in the Kitchen,” 1875, by Hermann Armin Kern. Poetry can remind us that with age comes some long-forgotten joys. Oil on canvas. Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava. Public Domain

In his poem “Written in a Carefree Mood,” 12th-century Chinese poet Lu Yu gives us this sweet and amusing portrait of an elderly man “whooping with delight” while diving into life:

Old man pushing seventy, In truth he acts like a little boy, Whooping with delight when he spies some mountain fruits, Laughing with joy, tagging after village mummers; With the others having fun stacking tiles to make a pagoda, Standing alone staring at his image in the jardiniere pool. Tucked under his arm, a battered book to read, Just like the time he first set out to school.

Such unrestrained behavior among old folks is rare, though some of us cut loose every once in a while when a lifetime of decorum gives way to the less inhibited joys of childhood. Lu Yu’s old man reminds the rest of us to relish life and laughter in spite of our years.

Cautionary Verse

Like bell buoys ringing out as night and fog roll in, other poems warn against the piling up of regrets that may accompany us into old age. From Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” many people remember the poem’s signature line, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” yet fail to connect that rage to the remorse portrayed in stanzas like this one:

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Those who rage in this poem are the dying who depart this life heavy with remorse and contrition, having left unfulfilled their potential.

"Old Woman Reading," 1820–1833, by Cornelis Kruseman. Poetry can help us make peace with some of our regrets. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public Domain

In his haunting poem “When You Are Old,” W.B. Yeats directs a gentler caveat to the woman who long ago spurned the narrator’s deepest affections:

When you are old and grey 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 amid a crowd of stars.

Many of us who are “old and grey and full of sleep” may read this poem and recall those times when, like the woman in this poem, we failed in some critical way or moment to return the affections of a spouse, lover, friend, or child. This poem also reminds us that the old and the young recollect the past quite differently, with the former remembering faces, moments, and events from long ago as if they happened only yesterday.

Key to those visits into the past is, of course, the time machine of memory.

Lost Time

An old woman watching the children of the village as they play, circa early 20th century, by H.A. Brendekilde. Inside an elderly woman’s memory is her as a child running through a meadow with friends. Public Domain

As we age, most of us may feel like the driver of a car we’ve owned for a long time. The machine still gets us where we want to go, but hail has dented the rooftop, the left front tire has a slow leak, and the engine consumes a lot of oil. We still have the mental wherewithal to make the drive, but the machine encasing us is not what it once was.

Our flesh is that car.

But the big fear for most of us grown older is the slippage of memory, forcing us to operate the car without GPS or maps. To lose one’s past is to lose one’s self. In “Forgetfulness,” America’s former poet laureate Billy Collins addresses this slow sliding away from the self. The “L” to which he refers in the poem is Lethe, the river in Hades that erases the memory of those who drink from it:

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

"Dante and the River of Lethe," 1880, by Gustave Doré. Public Domain

Though he doesn’t say so explicitly, Collins demonstrates that memory is precious to the old for a special reason. Somewhere inside the bent old woman we see waiting for a bus, there may well be a girl running through a meadow with her friends. The graybeard hunched over in a motorized cart in the grocery store may still imagine himself at times playing capture the flag when, to paraphrase poet Charles Kingsley, “all the world was young and all the trees were green.” Memory, then, for the elderly is a fountain of eternal youth from which they drink daily.

To Strive, To Seek, To Find, To Live

In “Ulysses,” Tennyson reminds us that these vestiges of youth can act as elixirs of hope and ambition for the old. Having returned from his long odyssey and now sharing command of his kingdom with his son, Ulysses ruminates on the tedium of the final chapters of his life: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end,/ To rust unburnish‘d, not to shine in use!/ As tho’ to breathe were life!”

After sharing more thoughts on the monotony of growing old, Ulysses remarks, “Some work of noble note, may yet be done,” then issues to himself and his fellow mariners this beautiful proclamation:

Come, my friends, ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho‘ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Here is a rallying cry against the petty infirmities and sadness of old age. If we are in reasonable health, we needn’t take to ship and go to sea to understand that we have yet the time and opportunity to set right any hurts and wrongs we have done. Rather than raging against the dying of the light, we still possess the ability to make our frail deeds dance in a green bay. Rather than cursing our peccadilloes and minor infirmities, we can laugh at them.

As long as enough of our faculties remain intact, we can admire a sunset, shower our family and friends with affection and kind words, cherish the memories of those who have gone before us to Tennyson’s Happy Isles, and greet each new day with gratitude.

These are the things poets can teach the old.

"Never Morning Wore to Evening but Some Heart Did Break," 1894, by Walter Langley. Poetry might help us remember that we may gain compassion as we age. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, England. Public Domain

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