When You are Old by William Bulter Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

            William Butler Yeats was the quintessential hopeless romantic. His first love was Maud Gonne, a fan of his poetry but not of his incessant marriage proposals. She ended up marrying someone else, became a widow, and still refused to marry Yeats! Perhaps just to spite her, he then proposed to her daughter—who rejected him as well. Finally, he married Miss George Hyde-Less and had two children. I wonder if she ever knew of his philandering in the past?

            Anyways, Yeats’s romanticism is very prevalent in his poetry, which is why I chose to recite and analyze his love poem, “When You Are Old”. I find romantic poetry to be very thought-provoking and relatable. In particular, I was touched by the range of tones existing in this piece and Yeats’s neat rhyme scheme (“abba”) that frames each stanza nicely. Even though the poem takes a somber tone by its end, the comfortable rhyme scheme makes each stanza feel neatly packaged like Yeats is embracing the words in a consuming hug. 

            In the beginning of the poem, Yeats starts off with a tone of nostalgia. He paints a soothing picture of an elderly person relaxing by the fire and reminiscing on the past. Since we know Yeats is a romantic, we can safely deduce he—or some other romantic—is speaking to a lover.  We are introduced to a recurring theme of the poem, polysyndeton, which keeps us hanging from one line to the next. The overuse of the conjunction “and” gives the impression that the poem is acting as a train of thought. We also can see the rhyme scheme come into play.

            Moving on to the second verse, Yeats talks about how many people view his love. His subtle use of alliteration, “glad grace,” draws attention to the perceived elegance of his beloved. In addition, he focuses on how these people cherish her outward appearance, her beauty “with love false and true”. To me, false love implies some of these admirers may have harbored jealousy towards his love or for some reason, Yeats does not feel the admirers’ love holds value. Suddenly, in the third line, Yeats shifts from the general community’s perception of his lover to “one man”; we shift from a broader thought to a more private one. Yeats describes how this one man loved more than just his lover’s outward appearance; he loved her “pilgrim soul” or her inner beauty and “the sorrows” that showed on her face as she traversed through life. In other words, he loved the human part of her. Quite beautifully, Yeats draws the reader into a more personal experience. Due to this personal insight into the one man’s psyche, we can assume Yeats is in fact the “one man”.

            At last in the final stanza, Yeats fully transitions to a more somber, regretful tone. He personifies Love by saying it fled to the mountains and hid himself among the stars. Since we have already deduced Yeats is the lover in the poem speaking to his beloved, we can also conclude that Yeats is the Love that ran away in the end. Yeats whimsical synecdoche for the night sky closes the poem on a serene note. Instead of facing his true feelings, Yeats disappeared into the vast background.