Two links on old age, for a wee blogging break

"Grey power is growing..." by Neil O'Brien in the Daily Telegraph.

The closing lines of a favourite poem from my childhood, The Bull by Ralph Hodgson, daily now more apt, in full from here:

The Bull

...

Pity him, this dupe of dream,
Leader of the herd again
Only in his daft old brain,
Once again the bull supreme
And bull enough to bear the part
Only in his tameless heart.
Pity him that he must wake;
Even now the swarm of flies
Blackening his bloodshot eyes
Bursts and blusters round the lake,
Scattered from the feast half-fed,
By great shadows overhead.
And the dreamer turns away
From his visionary herds
And his splendid yesterday,
Turns to meet the loathly birds
Flocking round him from the skies,
Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Ralph Hodgson