“I am not old, — I cannot be old,
Though threescore years and ten
Have wasted away, like a tale that is told,
The lives of other men:
I am not old ; though friends and foes
Alike have gone to their graves,
And left me alone to my joys or my woes,
As a rock in the midst of the waves.”
The Song of Seventy.
A Thousand Lines (1846)
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Martin Farquhar Tupper 31
English writer and poet 1810–1889Related quotes

“My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.”

Seulete suy et seulete vueil estre,
Seulete m'a mon doulz ami laissiée,
Seulete suy, sanz compaignon ne maistre,
Seulette suy, dolente et courrouciée.
Cent Balades, no. 11, line 1; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 12. Translation from Aliki Barnstone & Willis Barnstone (eds.) A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (1980) p. 203.

Journal (15 May 1824)

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 37

“I am a hundred and forty six years old and this is not my first unwinnable war.”
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.”
Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 37.
Context: My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.

In a letter of Gustave Courbet (1869); in Letters of Gustave Courbet, 1992, University of Chicago Press, transl. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, ISBN 0226116530
1860s