Below are 41 poems on aging from poets known and unknown.
- ‘In the Attic’ by Seamus Heaney
- ‘In View of the Fact’ by A. R. Ammons
- ‘Warning’ by Jenny Joseph
- ‘Growing Old’ by Mathew Arnold
- ‘Forgetfulness’ by Billy Collins
- ‘Silence’ by Anthony Thwaite
- ‘Age’ by Robert Creeley
- ‘Terminus’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- ‘An Old Man’s Winter Night’ by Robert Frost
- ‘Affirmation’ by Donald Hall
- ‘The Old Gods’ by Dannie Abse
- ‘I Look into My Glass’ by Thomas Hardy
- ‘Random Ageist Verses’ by Peter Porter
- ‘First Gestures’ by Julia Kasdorf
- ‘Touch Me’ by Stanley Kunitz
- ‘Nature’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- ‘The Password’ by Anne Stevenson
- ‘Late Ripeness’ by Czeslaw Milosz
- ‘Hail and Farewell’ by Charles Reznikoff
- ‘Tired with All These, For Restful Death I Cry’ by William Shakespeare
- ‘Like as the Waves Make Toward the Pebbled Shore’ by William Shakespeare
- ‘Lullaby’ Jenny Joseph
- ‘Young men dancing, and the old’ by Thomas Stanley
- ‘Not for Me a Youngman’s Death’ by Roger Mcgough
- ‘Tithonus’ by Lord Alfred Tennyson
- ‘Lunch’ Lotte Kramer
- ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas
- ‘The Descent’ by William Carlos Williams
- ‘Lines On Retirement, After Reading Lear’ by David Wright
- ‘When You Are Old’ by William Butler Yeats
- ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by William Butler Yeats
- ‘Written In a Carefree Mood’ by Lu Yu
- ‘Mrs Baldwin’ by Fleur Adcock
- ‘What I Regret’ by Ninna Cassian
- ‘Old Flame’ by Linda Chase
- ‘Blue Hydrangeas, September’ by Gillian Clarke
- ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold…’ by Maureen Duffy
- ‘Ageing’ Ruth Fainlight
- ‘Long Life’ by Elaine Feinstein
- ‘On Hearing I’d Outlived My Son the Linguist’ by Roy Fisher
- ‘Lieselott Among the Blackberries’ Gerda Mayer
Do you have a favorite poem on aging not included? Post it in the comment section below to be added to the list.
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Poems on Aging
On Aging by Maya Angelou