“Gather therefore the rose, while yet is prime,
For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower.”*“Life with its glories glides away,
And the stern footstep of decay
Comes stealing on.”**
I turn sixty-one today, and thus am now but two years short of the momentous birthday our forefathers knew as the grand climacteric. They said that a man arrives at the threshold of old age when he turns sixty-three. The word climacteric literally denotes a step on a ladder (Greek climax), and therefore was used as a metaphor to denote the step changes (or paradigm shifts) that mark the four ages of a man’s life. In the old reckoning, these climacterics occur at multiples of seven (or nine) years, with the most significant steps at twenty-one, forty-two, and sixty-three (hopeful systems added a fourth climacteric at eighty-four). The intervening ages are childhood, youth, maturity, and old-age.
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