The origin of this poem is alluded to by Burns in one of his letters to Frances Dunlop: "I had an old grand-uncle with whom my mother lived in her girlish years: the good old man was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of 'The Life and Age of Man'".

[2] An early draft of the poem was included in The First Commonplace Book, a work that was largely texts intended to be sung to the tunes of existing songs.

[6] The scholar Nigel Leask writes that the poem includes "surprisingly contemporary themes", noting its "lament for the harshness and brevity of human life" and direct criticism of "hundreds labour[ing] to support / a haughty lordling's pride".

The author Thomas De Quincey was deeply impacted by a stanza in the poem about a struggling peasant who was not allowed to work by Cassilis, a wealthy man:[6]See, yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight, So abject, mean and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil.

De Quincey wrote that "I had for ever ringing in my ears... those groans which ascended to heaven from his over-burdened heart— those harrowing words, "to give him leave to toil".

[9] Celinscak writes that the phrase has become banal due to "decades of overuse", noting that it was commonly used to describe the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Second World War.