| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Old Age | | By Edmund Waller (1606–1687) |
| | | THE SEAS are quiet when the winds give o’er; | |
| So calm are we when passions are no more. | |
| For then we know how vain it was to boast | |
| Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost. | |
| Clouds of affection from our younger eyes | 5 |
| Conceal that emptiness which age decries. | |
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| The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d, | |
| Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made: | |
| Stronger by weakness, wiser men become | |
| As they draw near to their eternal home. | 10 |
| Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view | |
| That stand upon the threshold of the new. | | | | |
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