Through this questioning he illustrates these changes in which the body becomes weak and bends down and the eyes lose their luster and sight. He continues to ask another question, “Is it for beauty to forgo her wreath?”(Arnold 2). In this question Arnold is resuming his example of the queen taking off her crown. The same thing happens with people, old age removes their glory and beauty. In the last line of the first stanza, he answers these questions saying “Yes, but not for this alone”(Arnold 5). He is implying that these things are with the coming of old age, but there are many other effects as …show more content…
He goes on to say that it “is to spend long days.. And not once feel that we were ever young”(Arnold 21-22). Being old for him is to be “immured in the hot prison of the present, month to month with weary pain”(Arnold 23-25). He feels as if his young soul is imprisoned in his old body unwillingly, and every month moves with tiring pain. He continues to elaborate his beliefs in the next stanza saying that “It is to suffer this,… And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel” (Arnold 27). Arnold feels as if there has been an absence of emotion, “no emotion—none” (Arnold 30) because his weak body now prevents his young heart from experiencing joy. All that “festers is the dull remembrance of change” (Arnold 29) as he grows old and the pain that comes with the memories of his youth. This shows how Arnold depended on his youth to define his happiness and