The pleasures of youth may excel in keenness and in zest, but they have at
the best a tinge of anxiety and unrest; they cannot have the fulness and
depth which may accompany the consolations of age, and are amongst the
richest rewards of an unselfish life.
For as with the close of the day, so with that of life; there may be
clouds, and yet if the horizon is clear, the evening may be beautiful.
Old age has a rich store of memories. Life is full of
"Joys too exquisite to last,
And yet more exquisite when past." [1]
Swedenborg imagines that in heaven the angels are advancing continually to
the spring-time of their youth, so that those who have lived longest are
really the youngest; and have we not all had friends who seem to fulfil
this idea? who are in reality--that is in mind--as fresh as a child: of
whom it may be said with more truth than of Cleopatra that
"Age cannot wither nor custom stale
Their infinite variety."
"When I consider old age," says Cicero, "I find four causes why it is
thought miserable: one, that it calls us away from the transaction of
affairs; the second, that it renders the body more feeble; the third, that
it deprives us of almost all pleasures; the fourth, that it is not very
far from death.
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