{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/growing-old",
 "title": "Growing Old",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems",
 "book_slug": "new-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1867,
  "venue": "New Poems (1867)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoems00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 35,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What is it to grow old?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it to lose the glory of the form,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The lustre of the eye?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yes, but not this alone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Is it to feel our strength⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not our bloom only, but our strength⁠—decay?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it to feel each limb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grow stiffer, every function less exact,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each nerve more weakly strung?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yes, this, and more! but not,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis not to have our life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mellow’d and soften’d as with sunset glow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A golden day’s decline!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis not to see the world",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And heart profoundly stirr’d;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The years that are no more!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is to spend long days",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And not once feel that we were ever young.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is to add, immured",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the hot prison of the present, month",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To month with weary pain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is to suffer this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deep in our hidden heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Festers the dull remembrance of a change,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But no emotion⁠—none.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is⁠—last stage of all⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When we are frozen up within, and quite",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The phantom of ourselves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which blamed the living man.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}