Old Age
Sonnet 4.
Old Age - meaning Summary
Turning Toward Divine Love
The speaker reflects on a long life as a sea voyage arriving at a harbor of reckoning. Former passions—art, ambition, romantic dreams—are judged illusory and insufficient. Confronted with mortality, including both the certainty of death and the anxiety that precedes it, the speaker renounces worldly satisfactions and seeks consolation in divine love, imagined through the embracing image of Christ on the cross.
Read Complete AnalysesThe course of my long life hath reached at last, In fragile bark o'er a tempestuous sea, The common harbor, where must rendered be Account of all the actions of the past. The impassioned phantasy, that, vague and vast, Made art an idol and a king to me, Was an illusion, and but vanity Were the desires that lured me and harassed. The dreams of love, that were so sweet of yore, What are they now, when two deaths may be mine,-- One sure, and one forecasting its alarms? Painting and sculpture satisfy no more The soul now turning to the Love Divine, That oped, to embrace us, on the cross its arms.
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