When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats

WHEN YOU ARE OLD BY W. B.
YEATS
The poem is written with the rhyme scheme ABBA CDDC EFFE in iambic-
pentameter and is rich with stylistic devices such as:
 Epithets: old, grey, soft look, glad grace, false love, true love,
changing face, glowing bars
 Anaphora / parallel constructions: And nodding by the fire... And
slowly read, and dream...; How many loved your... And loved your... But one man
loved... And loved the sorrows...; And bending down... And paced upon... And hid
his face...
 Antithesis: love false or true
 Capitalization: Love
 Metaphor: full of sleep, shadows deep, pilgrim soul, a crowd of stars
 Onomatopoeia: Murmur
The speaker directly addresses someone else and asks this person to imagine
old age, a time of grey hair and general tiredness. The speaker tells the addressee to
pick up this book when they're falling asleep by the fire, and to read from it, while
dreaming of the soft and shadowed look the addressee's own eyes used to have.
The addressee should also think of how many people loved the addressee's
gracefulness and beauty, whether or not these people were sincere in their love.
But there was one man who genuinely loved the addressee's emotional and
spiritual restlessness. This man also loved the sadness that showed on the
addressee's face as it changed over the years.
The speaker imagines the addressee bending down to tend to a fire and
muttering sadly about how love ran away to walk restlessly in the mountains and
hide among the stars of the night.
“When You Are Old” is a bittersweet poem that reveals the complexities of
love. The poem is generally taken to be addressed to Maud Gonne, an Irish actress
with whom Yeats was infatuated throughout his life (which is why we're using
male and female pronouns in this guide). That said, the poem can also be
interpreted more broadly, without specifying the names or genders of either the
speaker or the addressee. In any case, the poem argues in favor of a kind of love
based not on physical appearances—which fade over time—but on the deeper
beauty of the soul.
In the first stanza, the speaker asks the addressee to think ahead to a time
when she will be old, tired, and grey. Then, says the speaker, the addressee will
look back nostalgically on her life to date, thinking of her youthful looks and vigor
as though they were a dream. Those who love the addressee now—that is, at the
time of the poem's writing, when this woman is ostensibly still young—are
portrayed as superficial and insincere. The speaker implies that the so-called love
of these men for the addressee will fade, just as the basis for that love—the
addressee’s beauty and youth—will fade too.
The speaker contrasts his own love for the addressee with the inferior love
described above. The speaker’s love, the poem argues, will stand the test of time
because it is based on the addressee’s “pilgrim soul” and the “sorrows” of her
“changing face.” That is, the speaker perceives an inner restlessness of this
woman's soul and implies that this will express itself in her “changing face” as she
grows old. The speaker, then, claims to experience love that goes beyond the
surface—the addressee's face may change over time, but the "soul" that the speaker
loves will not.
Furthermore, the pilgrim-like quality of the addressee’s “soul” might be the
very reason why she seems to have denied the speaker’s love. It sounds like the
addressee refuses to settle down—meaning that the speaker is expressing love not
just in spite of being rejected, but in part because of it too.
With the above in mind, though, the speaker isn’t exactly painting a rosy
picture of the addressee’s future. In essence, the speaker is predicting a lonely
scene, one in which this woman has only a fire and a book for company. Indeed,
the speaker predicts that it will be through reading “this book”—the one in which
the poem appears—that the addressee will be reminded of her youth and,
ultimately, her failure to embrace love when given the chance. The speaker is
suggesting that the poem itself will stand as a testament to the speaker's true form
of love, when the shallow love of others is nothing but a distant memory.
The poem expresses a complicated sentiment, then, attesting to the power of
love as well as its limits. Indeed, there is a hint of bitterness in the way the speaker
predicts that the poem itself be a reminder of how love “fled” from the addressee.
But whatever the complexities, there is no doubting the speaker’s strength of
feeling—and through the poem, the reader is reminded that true love of the kind
described is rarely simple, easy, or certain.

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