The poems are similar in that both speakers are trying to come to terms with aging and death. However, the speakers differ very much in how they react to old age and dying.
Roethke's speaker is at peace with aging, and describes it in positive terms. He says of growing...
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older:
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around,—
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
An old man before the fire in green robes is a pleasant image that depicts one's waning years as a warm and comfortable time.
In contrast, Yeats's narrator dislikes aging, seeing an old man, in general, unless his soul "sings," as
. . . but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick
One speaker is at peace with death and looks forward to a return to nature while the other speaker longs to escape death by becoming a beautiful crafted object.Of hammered gold and gold enamellingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of Byzantium