When You Are Old By W. B. Yeats: Poem, Meaning And Analysis

This week’s poem is number #7 on my list of top Irish poems. It is a fantastic short one by the great William Butler Yeats. It also makes an appearance on my top Irish love poems list. Enjoy:

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.

When You Are Old: meaning and analysis

Yeats wrote ‘When You Are Old’ in 1891 and published it in his 1892 collection The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics. It is addressed to Maud Gonne, the actress and revolutionary he had met in 1889 and loved, largely without hope, for most of his life.

The poem is a loose reworking of a 1578 sonnet by the French poet Pierre de Ronsard, ‘Quand vous serez bien vieille’. Ronsard’s version is a little smug: one day, old and alone, you’ll regret turning me down. Yeats keeps the setting, an old woman nodding by the fire with a book, but makes it gentler and sadder.

What it means

He asks her to imagine herself old, reading this very poem and remembering. Many men, he says, loved her for her beauty and charm, but only one loved her ‘pilgrim soul’ and loved her as she aged. The final stanza is the saddest: Love itself has fled to the mountains and hidden its face among the stars. It is a quiet way of saying the chance has passed.

Form

Three four-line stanzas in iambic pentameter, rhymed ABBA. The steady, slow rhythm suits the picture of someone dozing by the fire.

Key themes

Unrequited love
Ageing and memory
True love versus admiration for beauty
Regret

More Irish poems

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