“Growing Old” Summary

“Growing Old” Themes

• 

  Aging, Decline, and Loss

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• 

  Reputation and Legacy

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Growing Old”

• Lines 1-5

  What is it to grow old?
  Is it to lose the glory of the form,
  The luster of the eye?
  Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
  —Yes, but not this alone.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 6-10

  Is it to feel our strength—
  Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
  Is it to feel each limb
  Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
  Each nerve more loosely strung?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 11-15

  Yes, this, and more; but not
  Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be!
  ’Tis not to have our life
  Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow,
  A golden day’s decline.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 16-20

  ’Tis not to see the world
  As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
  And heart profoundly stirred;
  And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
  The years that are no more.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 21-25

  It is to spend long days
  And not once feel that we were ever young;
  It is to add, immured
  In the hot prison of the present, month
  To month with weary pain.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 26-30

  It is to suffer this,
  And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
  Deep in our hidden heart
  Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
  But no emotion—none.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 31-35

  It is—last stage of all—
  When we are frozen up within, and quite
  The phantom of ourselves,
  To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
  Which blamed the living man.

  

  

  

  

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“Growing Old” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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• Rhetorical Question

  

  

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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“Growing Old” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• The form
• Luster
• Forego
• Wreath
• Bloom
• Function
• 'Tis
• 'Twould
• Rapt
• Immured
• Festers
• Blamed

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Growing Old”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Growing Old” Speaker

“Growing Old” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Growing Old”

More “Growing Old” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poet's Life and Work — Read a short biography of Matthew Arnold at the Poetry Foundation.

  • Arnold and the Victorian Era — Read an introduction to the literary and historical period with which Arnold is closely associated.

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of "Growing Old."

  • More About the Poet — More information about, and poems by, Arnold at Poets.org.

  • The Poem in Context — Read "Growing Old" in an 1867 edition of Arnold's poems.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Matthew Arnold

  • Dover Beach