Four lines are all Landor needs to sum up a life and say goodbye to it. The title tells us he is seventy-five, so the poem is a birthday stocktaking, but there is no fuss or self-pity in it. He lists what mattered, what he refused to waste time on, and then announces calmly that he is ready to go. Its central idea is that a life can be well lived without being a battle, and that the right ending to such a life is acceptance rather than protest.
The first line is the boldest: "I strove with none, for none was worth my strife." The repeated "none" gives it a firm, closing-the-door sound, and "strove" and "strife" are built from the same root, so the line seems to fold back on itself. It is also a little proud. To say that nobody was worth fighting is to rank everyone below you, and the line carries a faint, dry arrogance. The poem sounds modest, but it is not meek. Landor is a man who chose his priorities and does not apologise for them.
Those priorities come in the second line: "Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art." The repetition of "Nature" makes it feel like a ranking, with Art in a close second place. The line also stumbles slightly at the start, where the stress falls on "Nature" instead of the expected unstressed syllable, so the word is hit hard before the line settles into its regular pace. The capital letters on Nature, Art and later Life make them feel like grand presences, almost like people worth knowing, which quietly explains why ordinary squabbles were beneath him.
The third line holds the poem's best image: "I warmed both hands before the fire of Life." The metaphor is domestic. Life is a hearth, and Landor has been a guest sitting close to it. He does not say he built the fire, fought over it, or tried to burn brightly himself. He warmed his hands, a small, comfortable action that suggests enjoyment without greed. "Both hands" adds a note of fullness, as if he took in all the warmth on offer. The image also quietly answers the first line, because the fire is something he enjoyed, not something he fought for.
Then the fire gives out: "It sinks, and I am ready to depart." The verb "sinks" is gentle and works in two ways, as embers settling in the grate and as a sun going down. The grammar changes with it. The first three lines are in the past tense (strove, loved, warmed), while "sinks" and "am" bring us into the present. The poem moves from summary to the actual moment of leave-taking. The word "ready" matters most. He does not say resigned or willing or forced, only ready, the word of someone who has packed and is waiting by the door.
The form supports this calm. The lines are in iambic pentameter, the steady ten-syllable line English poetry often uses for reflection, and the rhyme scheme is a tidy ABAB: "strife" with "Life," "Art" with "depart." Both pairs carry meaning. Rhyming "strife" with "Life" links the two ideas he spends the poem separating, as if to suggest that strife is what life becomes when we are careless with it. Rhyming "Art" with "depart" leaves Art as the last thing he names before leaving, and even places it inside the word for leaving. The single quatrain also acts as its own argument. A man who thinks little is worth fighting over does not pile up stanzas.
What makes the poem significant is how much it does in so little space. It is an epigram, a form that depends on compression and a final turn, and Landor ends on a quiet reversal: the poem begins with refusal and ends with consent. For students, it is also a good lesson in how plain words work. There is almost nothing difficult here, yet each word has been weighed, and the effect is dignity. It offers a way of looking at old age, and at death, that is neither fearful nor boastful, only settled.