When You Are Old
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.
(By: William Butler Yeats)
Summary
Yeats exhorts his beloved: when you are old and falling asleep by your fire, take down this book, and dream of how you used to be as you read it.
Dream of how many people loved you when you were younger. Only one man loved you as you grew older.
Murmur to yourself sadly about how Love paced on the mountains and hid his face in stars as you grew old.
Analysis
Like so many of the poems in this collection, "When You Are Old" was written for Maud Gonne. It is based on Ronsard's "Quand Vous Serez Bien Vieille," Sonnets Pour Helene (1578), which maintains the Maud Gonne/Helen of Troy parallel that Yeats so often draws. The idea of love in age is an ancient one, meant to express the fact that love inheres not merely in youth, but in something deeper and more lasting.
Yeats capitalizes "Love," thus personifying the concept, which is is a nod to the poem's 16th century roots. Although monotheism had taken over Europe, Greek and Roman gods were very much a part of 16th century consciousness. Yeats's "Love" is a modernization of the ancient figure, Eros.
