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A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations: Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings; Illustrated by Striking Passages from Scripture, and Forming Altogether a Complete Book of Devotional Poetry.

Religion

A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations: Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings; Illustrated by Striking Passages from Scripture, and Forming Altogether a Complete Book of Devotional Poetry.

Quotations; Religious poetry

They shall still bring forth fruit in old _age_; they shall be fat and
flourishing.--Psalm xcii. 14.

That the _aged_ men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in
charity, in patience. The _aged_ women likewise, that they be in
behaviour as becometh holiness.--Titus, ii. 2, 3.


    Ye gods! how easily the good man bears
    His cumbrous honours of increasing years.
    _Age_, oh my father, is not, as they say,
    A load of evils heaped on mortal clay,
    Unless impatient folly aids the curse,
    And weak lamenting makes our sorrows worse.
    He, whose soft soul, whose temper ever even,
    Whose habits placid as a cloudless heaven,
    Approve the partial blessings of the sky,
    Smooths the rough road, and walks untroubled by;
    Untimely wrinkles furrow not his brow,
    And graceful wave his locks of reverend snow.
                             _M., from Anaxandrides._


    And next in order sad, _Old age_ we found,
    His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind;
    With drooping cheer still pouring on the ground,
    As on the place where nature him assign’d
    To rest, when that the sisters had untwined
    His vital thread, and ended with their knife
    The fleeting course of fast-declining life:
    There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint,
    Rue with himself his end approaching fast,
    And all for nought his wretched mind torment
    With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past,
    And fresh delights of lusty youth forewaste;
    Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek,
    And to be young again of Jove beseek!
    Crook-backed he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed,
    Went on three feet and sometime crept on four,
    With old lame bones that rattled by his side:
    His scalp all piled, and he with eld forelore,
    His wither’d fist still knocking at death’s door;
    Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath;
    For brief, the shape and messenger of death.
                                           _Sackville._


    So mayest thou live till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
    Into thy mother’s lap, or be with ease
    Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature.
    This is old _age_, but then thou must outlive
    Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
    To withered, weak, and grey.
                                                  _Milton._

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