he stones;
The mount is mute, the channel dry,
And down he lays his weary bones.

But the strangle hold of complimentary verse upon English poetry, if
nothing else, would prevent this view being unanimously expressed there.
For in the Victorian period, poets who began their literary careers by
prophesying their early decease lived on and on. They themselves might
bewail the loss of their gift in old age--in fact, it was usual for them
to do so [Footnote: See Scott, _Farewell to the Muse_; Landor, _Dull is
my Verse_; J. G. Percival, _Invocation_; Matthew Arnold, _Growing Old_;
Longfellow, _My Books_; O. W. Holmes, _The Silent Melody_; C. W.
Stoddard, _The Minstrel's Harp_; P. H. Hayne, _The Broken Chords_; J. C.
MacNiel, _A Prayer_; Harvey Hubbard, _The Old Minstrel_.]--but it would
never do for their disciples to concur in the sentiment. Consequently we
have a flood of complimentary verses, assuring the great poets of their
unaltered charm.[Footnote: See Swinburne, _Age and Song, The Centenary
of Landor, Statue of Victor Hugo_; O. W. Holmes, _Whittier's Eightieth
Birthday, Bryant's Seventieth Birthday_; E. E. Stedman, _Ad Vatem_; P.
H. Hayne, _To Longfellow_; Richard Gilder, _Jocoseria_; M. F. Tupper,
_To the Poet of Memory_; Edmund Gosse, _To Lord Tennyson on his
Eightieth Birthday_; Alfred Noyes, _Ode for the Seventieth Birthday of
Swinburne_; Alfred Austin, _The Poet's Eightieth Birthday_; Lucy Larcom,
_J. G. Whittier_; Mary Clemmer, _To Whittier_; Percy Mackaye, _Browning
to Ben Ezra_.] And of course it is all worth very little as indicating
the writer's attitude toward old age. Yet the fact that Landor was still
singing as he "tottered on into his ninth decade,"--that Browning,
Tennyson, Swinburne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holme's, and Whitman
continued to feel the stir of creation when their hair was hoary, may
have had a genuine influence on younger writers.

Greater significance attaches to the fact that some of the
self-revealing verse lamenting the decay of inspiration in old age is
equivocal, as Landor's

Dull is my verse: not even thou
Who movest many cares away
From this lone breast and weary brow
Canst make, as once, its fountains play;
No, nor those gentle words that now
Support my heart to hear thee say,
The bird upon the lonely bough
Sings sweetest at the close of day.

It is, of course, even more meaningful when the aged poet, disregarding
convention, frankly asserts the desira