Reluctance
I’ve been touched by how many people seem to have empathized with the difficulty of letting go and the sadness over the passing of time that I expressed in the post “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
The title is taken from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and in the post I provided the relevant excerpt from that lengthy but wonderful poem. I want also to call your attention to two other literary offerings on the subject. The first one is from Samuel Johnson and was presented in the comments section by “FunkyPhd”:
There are few things not purely evil of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, “this is the last.” Those who never could agree together shed tears when mutual discontent has determined them to a final separation; of a place which has been frequently visited, though without pleasure, the last look is taken with heaviness of heart”¦ This secret horror of the last is inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful. We always make a secret comparison between a part and the whole; the termination of any period of life reminds us that life itself has likewise its termination; when we have done anything for the last time, we involuntarily reflect that a part of the days allotted to us is past, and that as more is past there is less remaining.
Plus é§a change, plus c’est la méªme chose.
But insightful though that Johnson quote is, I’ll leave the last word to a poet. From Robert Frost (you guessed it), the poem is “Reluctance”:
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ”˜Whither?’Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Aging is a bittersweet time of life. We can hope we have gained a bit of wisdom over the decades and a degree of patience. Forunately, I have a 48 year companion who has been both an anchor and the wind in my sails.
Frost wrote so well about loss and longing. In “Directive”, he shows us the abandoned path in the woods and the place of imagination where kids used to play with sticks and pieces of broken plates. “Weep for what little things could make them glad…” He waves the reader forward with, “Come, if you’ll let a guide direct you only has at heart your getting lost…” Maybe growing older and seeing the end of things both small and large is getting un-lost. What is it the youngsters say now? Woke?
It’s been almost fifty years since I first read those lines of Frost. To quote a less academically-recognized poet, Bob Seger, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
Thanks for this post.
The old Neo is back! More like this, please!
“It is not easy to be the last leaf on the tree, to remember all those who have now passed on,” I don’t remember where I read this, from an interview with a centenarian.
At 83 I am still trying to be relevant. The Great Divide is looming larger on the horizon and I’m doing my best to ignore it. These words from Max Erhmann’s “The Desiderata” are my guide.
“Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.”
Wise words. Not easy to live, at least for me.
Ah, Neo. Thank you for that Frost poem. How I have missed it I don’t know. The last stanza is sublime. Just think of all the prose and poetry that has been written over the centuries trying to explain or prepare us for the “end game.” When we’re young we don’t want to be bothered to read it, or we read it with an only partially formed understanding. As we grow older we realize that we are all writing our own”how to” manuals. I only know this, Neo. Thou hast a canny heart.
JJ,
Yes, be gentle with yourself. And, when possible, be gentle with others. Alas, too often that is not possible.
My grandfather used to tell me, “I’ve outlived most of my friends and all of my enemies”. I kind of think outliving my friends will be the hardest thing; I won’t have anyone to share all those memories with.