Grow old along with me! The best is yet to…

The lines open “Rabbi Ben Ezra”, a monologue in thirty-two stanzas placed in the mouth of Abraham ibn Ezra, the Jewish scholar and poet of twelfth-century Spain. The rabbi invites a companion to grow old with him and trust the plan of God: “Our times are in His hand Who saith ‘A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’” The following stanzas praise the doubts and struggles of youth, “Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough”, and go on to the image of the potter’s wheel on which God shapes the clay of a life.

Browning published the poem in Dramatis Personae in 1864, his first collection after the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861 and his return from Italy to London.

The opening has taken on a life of its own, quoted on anniversary cards and at golden weddings, and it gave John Lennon the first words of his late song “Grow Old with Me”.

Rabbi Ben Ezra (Dramatis Personae), opening lines, 1864

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work