Andrew's Wiki
Old Age

The Poet Laments the Coming of Old Age
(1945)

Content

• People think now that you can earn goodness easily and cast off evil easily
• Says that her folly has been cast out: “with the hare-wild wind / Of my spring it has gone” and now her object is merely to “bring back sight to the blind”
• Reversal of hope: she used to see “great things mirrored in littleness” but now sees the great brought down by time: nothing is safe
  • Time doesn’t bring Goodness; and you can’t ever catch Wisdom
• Circle of life, Alexander dead, emphasis on the gone
• Definite echoes of late Yeats

Form

• She rambles just like the late Auden will ramble after her, with lots of ellipses, ancient references, capitalizes common nouns/ideas, general air of sadness