SPECIAL ARTICLE

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18266, 27 December 1924, Page 9

SPECIAL ARTICLE

THE FLYING YEARS ♦ regret and contentment. (SJICIAIAI WRITTEN JOS. "TH» Alts, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! ■ *»■«*»' Omar Khayyam. Grow old along with me! The heet is to be, The l»ft of life, for which the first was made. —Browning. Years.ago. when I was a boy, I lay in bed in a New Zealand homestead and wailed for the coming of the New Year. It was a still, warm night, and the tall pines that I could see through the window did not move. It struck me as curious that Nature gave 6ign of the great change that was f imminent. The transition was marked « by no stir in earth or air; Nature, indifferent to the hopes and fears of man, glided along the river of years with no thought to his divisions of time. And a terror seized me. Timo was going—going—going. It could not be grasped and stayed; it was inexorable. My life was passing; I was another ■ ' year nearer the time when there would ' be no more me. I was then, perhaps, j twelve. It was some 3'ears later that 1 read of the same sort of terror that held the boy in "The Story of an African Farm'? as he listened to the ticking of the watch and: reflected that ■ with each tick someone died. Then on the morrow there was the sunshine and 7 a fishing party for the holiday house- - hold, and thoughts became much more , , pleasant. As we grow older, I think, we do not feel this menace of the years in quite tins way. We are still acutely conscious -' of it; we look back wistfully on our » , lost youth; we realise with a pang that our bodies will not do what they once did; we hear louder and louder the 'v ncflae of that unknown sea on Which we most venture at last; but we have compensations. Many of us have now ties that are dearer than anything in our youth. We J have become more philosophical. The »ting and venom and unrest of youth, its wild pessimism and depths of morij?- bidity have gone with its roses and "J raptures. The spirit of wonder hae not gone (or should not have), but with it has developed a better aens© of proportion, a larger tolerance. Our interests are wider, and we have learnt 1. a little (even if it is ever so little) wisdom. Our intellectual powers have ■ developed and opened up new horizons. In youth we thought we knew everything (or sometimes northing); now we ' know that we know little, but for what we know we have surer foundations. ■' Hen it was a case either of "I can do s everything 1" or "I can do nothing!" ' Now we have a mare correct estimate ;. of our powers. We know that we shall never set any Thames on fire, and & there is tranquillity in that discovery, £ but of the abilities God has given us ifwe have made some use. and their are easily visible. "We are £ Jess egotistical, and at the same time Jess conventional. We care less what -.people think of us and therefore are freer. And the world has lost neither . its beauty nor its intellectual nor " moral interest. The thrill may'not be 'I so piercing as ,it was when we were vyoung, but appreciation has widened £»nd mellowed with experience, si- One advantage in living in this titne iis that man is less disposed to grow old prematurely—outwardly, at any rate—f than he was two or three generations I haver always thought Thftckt'eray's famous "Age of Wisdom" illumI initiating on this point:— teHo, pretty page, with the dimpled f*™, 97; < That never haa known tho barbel's shear, W your wish is woman to win, | 5 JTlus id the way that boys begin, £?■ Wait till you come to forty year. » The implication in this poem is that a 6 man is middle-aged at forty. >ln p'.Thackeray's time John Leech and Keene were drawing in "Punch" men of forty or thereabouts whose appearance shows that this was than an idea of Thackeray's; it jjCirWas a conception of the age. Look at |6 's fathers of young families-r-so in form and feature, so grave in demeanour. Heir whole appearIpanoe denotes art early acceptance of age. To-day a man never conff*; fiders himself -old at forty. He keeps flp Ids games, looks to his figure, W[ r - dresses like a man of twenty, and often |Ki' when a few more years have paased can |& • hardly he. distinguished from his sons. 1*! 'lt is the same with women. The §. mothers in "Punch" of the old days Ijlc i are matronly. The mothers in "Punch" jg&ii-io-day are like thedr daughters. SR' The years, however, do ring their kneU. From the moment man began fe;; to reflect he must have meditated upon tile shortness of life and the warning fi-;.iv'bf the passing years. Such thoughts ' are. in all literatures, and have inspired kC'v'fmany of their most moving passages. are in classical Greek ("a dream & shadow ift mankind," says Pinz flar); in the Bible (life is "a watch in 'the-night" and "a tale that is told"); f; ./*n the Persian poet who through the "senilis of an Englishman has become a possession of the world: in English f, >ffrom the Saxon stoiy of the bin! and ; ' Vthe banqueting hall, through Shaken fepeare, to the present day. (A bird f into the hall from the darkness, • Battered along its length, and disap- - peared into the darkness at the other «nd, whereupon it was likened to the ,Mifo of man). Shakespeare uses the .' subject in some of his grandest pas- .. .-'sages. Tennyson has-J>ut life into oto line—"Man comes and tills the fields and lies beneath,"—in a poem tjiat as '' itoetrv is higher than his better known bells." I think we - would appreciate the solemn propriety ' of Longfellow's metaphor if the pom were less hackneyed. j And our Qiearta, though "toot and brave, StUl like muffled drums are beating, Funeral marches to the grave. To all men, to those whose faith is unshakable, to those who "faintly trust the larger hope," and to those who have no hope at all, these majestic ,or poignant or solemn meditations on life and time strike home. In reminding him of his mortality they bring face to face with the truth, and purify his spirit. The text for the New Year, however, is from Browning rather than the seductive but weakening philosopher of Persia: '' Grow old along with me," the best is yet to be!" 'if- Youth ended, I ahafi. try gain or loss thereby: Leave the fire ashes, what survives is cold: And I shall weigh the same, * Give life ita praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. The gifts of the years are many—--1 memories, experience, wisdom, friendship, tolerance, a wider knowledge and a deeper understanding of that blend of comedy and tragedy, that awful mystery, which we call life. I offer you two I, ' mottoes for the New Year—Browning's "Greet the unseen with a cheer!" and r- ' that saying of Bacon's which John ' Morley put over his mantelpiece—"The nobler a soul is, the more objects of I" , 5 compassion it hath." Without pity L v is one'of them, the gifts of the year ■iT #W *®rth 1