Poems about growing old and regret?

Parent Cafe
21

See, I love poems about growing old and feisty - not old and sad!

Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” is a good one, in this respect, especially the last lines (italics mine, of course):

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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A poem about getting over regret for a romance that doesn’t happen:

Why so pale and wan fond lover?

BY SIR JOHN SUCKLING

Why so pale and wan fond lover?
      Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
      Looking ill prevail?
      Prithee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute young sinner?
      Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
      Saying nothing do’t?
      Prithee why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
      This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
      Nothing can make her;
      The devil take her.

23

two come to mind… “Ooh la la” by Rod Stewart, which includes that well known line,

“I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.”

and of course, Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” expresses it like this,

“Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”

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I think regret is a theme in Annabel Lee by Poe.