"When You Are Old" is a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In the poem, which is published in Yeats's second collection, The Rose (1893), the speaker asks someone to think ahead to old age, strongly suggesting that the addressee will eventually regret being unwilling to return the speaker's love. Most critics agree that the poem is about Yeats's relationship with Maud Gonne, an Irish actress and nationalist. Though the poem is one of the best-loved of Yeats's works, many people don't realize that it is based on a much earlier sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard, a 16th century French Renaissance poet.
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The Full Text of “When You Are Old”
1When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
2And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
3And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
4Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
5How many loved your moments of glad grace,
6And loved your beauty with love false or true,
7But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
8And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
9And bending down beside the glowing bars,
10Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
11And paced upon the mountains overhead
12And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Full Text of “When You Are Old”
1When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
2And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
3And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
4Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
5How many loved your moments of glad grace,
6And loved your beauty with love false or true,
7But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
8And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
9And bending down beside the glowing bars,
10Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
11And paced upon the mountains overhead
12And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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“When You Are Old” Summary
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“When You Are Old” Themes
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Love and Beauty
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Aging
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “When You Are Old”
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Lines 1-2
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book, -
Lines 3-4
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; -
Lines 5-6
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true, -
Lines 7-8
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face; -
Lines 9-12
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.
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“When You Are Old” Symbols
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Fire
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“When You Are Old” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Diacope
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Enjambment
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Personification
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Sibilance
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Polysyndeton
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“When You Are Old” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Pilgrim
- Glowing Bars
- Murmur
- Amid
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “When You Are Old”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“When You Are Old” Speaker
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“When You Are Old” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “When You Are Old”
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More “When You Are Old” Resources
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External Resources
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More Poems and Further Reading — A selection of materials on Yeats curated by the Poetry Foundation.
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A Reading by Colin Farrell — A reading of the poem by Irish actor Colin Farrell.
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A Reading by Cillian Murphy — Another Irish actor gives a reading of "When You Are Old."
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An Insight Into The Yeats-Gonne Relationship — A 1908 letter from Maud Gonne to the poet.
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An Insight into Yeats's Literary World — This is the speech given by Yeats upon his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Butler Yeats
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