Colin Jeffery looks back over a lifetime from the far end of it. The speaker begins with memory, recalling a time when life seemed endless and Death was only a shadow somewhere in the distance. Childhood, in his picture, was all bright summer days, friendships that would surely last, and parents who could never die. Old age then was "a distant foreign land," something that happened to other people.
The final stanza brings the mood down to earth. He now walks in that land himself, with aching bones and the small troubles of an old man. The shadow that once "stalked" from far off is close enough that he wonders when it will stop following and simply claim him. The poem's feeling is quiet and reflective, tinged with sadness and resignation rather than panic. The last line turns the opening idea around: time, which has been "fleeting" all along, will stop when he dies. The tone is plain and honest, which makes the ending land gently but firmly.