Careworn

The weeks of working hard to look after his sick family left him looking careworn.

At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was care-worn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.

The effect upon his personal appearance of this wear and tear of his intellect was striking and manifest. The hue of youth and health entirely departed from his cheeks, and he looked so sad and careworn, that it was quite a terrible thing to look upon a young lad so, as it were, upon the threshold of existence, and in whom anxious thoughts were making such war upon the physical energies.

Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

I don't find the pose of careless youth charming and engaging any more than you find the pose of careworn age fascinating and eccentric, I should imagine.

Played acoustically, glacially paced and sung in Kristofferson's parched, age-weathered voice, even his more lighthearted songs – Jesus Was a Capricorn, Best Of All Possible Worlds – were leant^([sic – meaning lent]) an eerie gravitas, while Me and Bobby McGee and Sunday Morning Coming Down sounded heartbreakingly careworn and poignant.