an.” Short of this, we get no other clues as to who the speaker is, except, we do believe he is an old man. We believe this because only an old man can have the perspective of knowing what it was like to be young, what it was like to perceive old age from a youthful perspective, and, at the same time, to be able to tell us what, exactly, growing old is. Thus, our speaker is an aged male who appears to be speaking under the conditions of lamenting the debilitating nature of old age.
III. The tone of the poem is one of sadness, regret, vulnerability, weariness, pain and decay. Arnold achieves this complexity of tone through the use of language. We see decay, pain and vulnerability of the human form in stanzas one and two wherein the speaker informs us that growing old does, indeed, represent eyes that lose their “lustre”, the “foregoing” of beauty’s wreath, “decaying strength”, “stiffer limbs”, “less exact function”, and “weakly strung” nerves. As if this weren’t enough to set a tone of lament, vulnerability, pain and decay, the speaker then informs us that though these all accompany growing old, there is “this, and more!”
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