oldhood = 'old age'

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:03 PM -0400 8/14/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>2009  _Comments and Analysis on Growing Old_  (May 23)  [
>http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Matthew_Arnold/5785/comments]: In the
>forth [sic] stanza, the poet [viz., Matthew Arnold] adds that "'Tis not to
>see the worlds...As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes". He wants to
>say that old hood [sic] is not what he thought it would be.
>Usenet takes it back to 2000.
>
No hood like an old hood, I always say.

(OT) Sounds like old Matt was having a pretty bad day when he wrote
this one....

...
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion-none.
...

And so on...But maybe he was like those writers who discover a great
little island or restaurant and makes it sound undesirable just to
discourage others from overrunning the joint.

LH

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