Whether scholars and anthologists have assigned a precise date of composition to Terminus or not, the general impression has been that Emerson wrote the poem upon approaching old age. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson implied that it was written in the 'sixties:
In the month of December, 1866, I, returning from six months on a Western railroad, met my father in New York just setting out for his winter's journey to the West, and we spent the night together at the St. Denis Hotel. He read me some poems that he was soon to publish in his new volume, May Day, and among them Terminus. I was startled, for he, looking so healthy, so full of life and young in spirit, was reading his deliberate acknowledgment of failing forces and his trusting and serene acquiescence.