When You Are Old Summary & Analysis
by William Butler Yeats

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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.

  • “When You Are Old” Introduction

    • "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.

  • “When You Are Old” Summary

    • 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” Themes

    • Theme Love and Beauty

      Love and Beauty

      “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.

    • Theme Aging

      Aging

      The poem has a fairly bleak outlook on aging, with the speaker suggesting to the addressee that life will grow sadder and lonelier as youthful beauty fades away. The speaker links the enjoyment of life to the addressee's youth, as the poem argues that the addressee should make the most of the younger years she has still has left. Through the speaker's words to the addressee, the poem argues that time passes by quicker than people realize—and that once youth is gone, it is truly irretrievable.

      The poem takes an imagined look into the future day-to-day existence of the addressee. It shows a picture that contrasts sharply with the vibrant and vivacious life that this woman seems to have been living at the time of the poem’s writing. Old age is depicted in the first stanza as a time of passivity. The addressee is falling asleep by the fire, grey-haired and lacking energy. The speaker here implores her to “take down this book”—likely the collection of poems that holds this poem—and read, in order to be reminded of her former glories.

      In the second stanza, the speaker characterizes the addressee's youth in terms of how loved she is, suggesting that youth is a kind of attractive force that brings other people into its orbit. According to the speaker, people love the addressee's “glad grace” and “beauty.” But the poem then links aging to sorrow, suggesting that the addressee's “changing face” over the years will reflect an internal sadness that comes with the loss of youth. In the third stanza, the loss of youth also seems to cut short any possibility of love. Love, in this future scenario, has “fled” from the addressee; like youthful looks, love is a kind of present absence in the addressee's old age—that is, it's felt deeply because of the fact that it’s no longer there.

      Of course, this is all viewed through the perspective of the speaker. It’s not necessarily true that the addressee will have to spend old age looking back nostalgically on her youth. But the poem seems to imply that this is likely, given how—in the speaker’s opinion—the addressee's current life is governed by things that will vanish over time (beauty and youthful energy). All in all, “When You Are Old” paints a pessimistic picture of old age, suggesting that it’s a time of melancholic reflection and regret, particularly for those who focused on shallow forms of love in their youth. It’s up to the reader, of course, to decide whether this argument rings true—especially as the poem was written by a young man.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “When You Are Old”

    • Lines 1-2

      When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
      And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

      The poem begins with a restatement of its title, setting up what follows as direct communication between the speaker and an unnamed addressee. This addressee is usually taken to be Irish Nationalist and actress Maud Gonne, but the poem works equally well with a more general interpretation. Regardless of the precise identities of the speaker and addressee, the poem feels intimate from the beginning, with the reader as an outside observer of a seemingly close relationship.

      "When You Are Old" contrasts two moments in time. The first line asks the addressee—and by extension the reader—to think beyond the present moment and imagine the future. This is a time when the addressee will be "old," "grey," and sleepy. This future scene contrasts with the time of the poem's writing, which the reader learns more about from line 3 onwards.

      The first line subtly evokes the weariness of old age. The hypnotic /l/ consonance in "old," "full," and "sleep" has a lulling effect, conjuring an image of the addressee drifting in and out of sleep by the fire. The repeated use of "and"—which is developed into more extensive polysyndeton later in the poem—has a similar effect. The "and" between "old" and "grey" is grammatically unnecessary, but its presence makes the line take just a little bit longer, slowing the poem down to a pace befitting a vision of sleepy old age.

      In line 2, the poem starts to reveal its speaker's agenda. The speaker offers the addressee an instruction for this far-off future moment: "take down this book." The preceding caesura and the gentle /d/ consonance keep up the sleepy atmosphere. It's not immediately obvious which book the speaker is referring to, but as the mode of communication here—the poem itself—is a form of literature, it could well mean the book in which this poem is collected. This interpretation would support the idea that this poem is, on at least one level, about the complicated relationship between Yeats himself and his muse, Maud Gonne. Regardless, the speaker feels that this specific book will, in the future, tell the addressee something about her life, particularly with regard to the contrast between the poem's present and the future it projects.

    • Lines 3-4

      And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
      Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

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    • 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.

  • “When You Are Old” Symbols

    • Symbol Fire

      Fire

      Fire is functions as a kind of ironic symbol in "When You Are Old." Usually, fire represents passion and intensity. If someone is fiery, it suggests that they possess emotional strength that is powerful, much as the addressee seems to in her youth.

      But in this poem's imagined future, fire is primarily just functional—it keeps the elderly addressee warm. It's almost like a companion, something that the addressee tends to instead of maintaining friendships and romantic relationships. Most of all, though, the fire here represents the spent passions of youth. According to the speaker, old age will no longer be a time in which the addressee is loved for beauty or "glad grace"—instead, it will be a time of reflection and perhaps regret. The addressee will read about the metaphorical fire of her youth by the light of the literal fire that now keeps her warm.

  • “When You Are Old” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Allusion

      In a way, the whole poem is one long allusion. One of Yeats's formative influences was the 16th century French poet Pierre de Ronsard. The latter's Sonnets pour Hélène (Sonnets for Helen) contains a poem called "When You Are Very Old," from which Yeats's poem borrows heavily. It's less of a direct translation and more of an alternative rewriting, with Yeats taking the original and mixing it up with elements of his own choosing.

      Both poems call on their subject—the addressee—to imagine the future and see a loneliness that contrasts with the vibrancy of youth. In addition, both poems confidently proclaim that their speakers will someday be literary successes, implying that both addressees will regret the choices that they have made—namely, not to love their respective speakers romantically—in part because of this future literary achievement. In the Ronsard poem, the speaker predicts that the addressee will someday sing the speaker's verses; in Yeats, the addressee reads the speaker's book in old age. Both addressees are, then, predicted to regret denying their speakers' loves—and this regret will in part be tied to the way in which they come to worship the speakers' poetry, perhaps because these poems have already outlasted the all-too-fleeting beauty of youth.

    • Alliteration

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    • Assonance

    • Caesura

    • Consonance

    • Diacope

    • Enjambment

    • Personification

    • Sibilance

    • Polysyndeton

  • “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
    Pilgrim
    • A pilgrim is a traveler, usually one with a particular religious or spiritual purpose. For example, Muslims from around the world make the Hajj—arabic for "pilgrimage"—to Mecca to show solidarity with other Muslims and submission to God. Here, the word implies a kind of emotional and spiritual restlessness.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “When You Are Old”

    • Form

      "When You Are Old" has a tight and simple form, consisting of three stanzas, each of which are quatrains of iambic pentameter (with some variation).

      This poem takes a much earlier poem as its inspiration: "When You Are Very Old" by the 16th century French poet Pierre de Ronsard. Like that poem, Yeats's poem features a speaker telling an addressee that she will regret not returning the speaker's love. Both poems paint a picture of a solitary elderly figure, quietly reflecting on what might have been. Ronsard's poem is a sonnet, and though Yeats's is not, evidence of the original form remains. In line 7 of this poem there is a turn (a.k.a a volta), which is an integral part of the sonnet form. This is the point at which the poem reveals the terms of its argument—why it has said what it has said so far, and how this information is relevant going forward. For Yeats's poem, it's the moment when the speaker differentiates himself from the others who love the addressee for allegedly more superficial reasons.

      It's also worth noting that the poem is, essentially, one long sentence. The strongest punctuation comes in the form of semi-colons, and this lack of full stops helps give the poem a hypnotic, lulling sound. Its phrases seem to rise and fall without ever quite resolving, mimicking the tension between sleep and wakefulness that the poem describes. The first stanza sets the scene, the second differentiates various types of love, and the third describes the regret that the speaker predicts the addressee will experience in the future.

    • Meter

      "When You Are Old" is written in iambic pentameter (five poetic feet with a da DUM rhythm, creating a total of ten syllables per line) throughout. The steadiness of the rhythm has a lulling effect that mirrors the poem's discussion of sleep vs. wakefulness. In combination with the use of consonance and placement of caesurae, the meter of the first stanza helps paint a vivid picture of someone sitting by the fire in old age, with the unstressed and stressed syllables of the iamb embodying the pull of sleep and the resistance of wakefulness. Lines 1, 2 and 4 fit the iambic pattern:

      When you | are old | and grey |and full | of sleep,

      Interestingly, the first "and" of line 1 is arguably superfluous—in the grammatical sense, at least. Including it makes the line take a little bit longer than it would otherwise, and so it helps establish the poem's generally slow, meditative pace. Indeed, "and" is used frequently throughout—with a number of lines employing polysyndeton—for the purpose of both keeping the meter regular and reinforcing the sleepiness of the future the speaker imagines.

      Though lines 3 and 5 vary the meter slightly, it's line 10 that is the most interesting variation.

      Murmur, | a litt- | -le sad- | -ly, how | Love fled

      Here, a trochee substitutes for the iamb in the first foot, and it is immediately followed by a caesura. This is a surprising moment that lends the word "murmur" greater emphasis and making it feel almost involuntary—like the kind of verbal utterance it describes. Then, the return of the iambs after the rest provided by the caesura takes on a sad sense of persistence as the poem pushes towards its conclusion.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      "When You Are Old" has a highly regular rhyme scheme. In each quatrain, the first and second lines form one rhyming pair and the middle two lines form another. So, the scheme goes like this:

      ABBA

      CDDC

      EFFE

      The purity and regularity of the rhymes have a hypnotic effect, as though the lines themselves are designed to put someone to sleep. There is a gentle tension at play in the poem between sleep and wakefulness, and the rhymes contribute to this effect, alongside deft use of consonance and caesurae.

      The neatness of the rhymes also foregrounds the poem's discussion of beauty. All of the end words are in harmony—but there is a tension between that superficial regularity and the fact that the poem is discussing old age and the loss of beauty.

  • “When You Are Old” Speaker

    • Though the poem doesn't explicitly say so, the speaker is generally taken to be William Butler Yeats. Yeats wrote numerous letters and poems to Maud Gonne, an Irish actress and prominent political campaigner. Accordingly, this poem, as with many others, is usually seen in the context of Yeats's infatuation with Gonne. That does seem to make sense, given that the speaker implores the addressee, in the old age the speaker imagines, to take down "this book"—presumably the book in which this very poem appears, which would be Yeats's The Rose.

      With the above in mind, though, the poem can easily be interpreted as discussing love and romantic relationships more generally. In essence, it's one person's prediction of the future, but the speaker's feelings could apply to a wide range of real people beyond Yeats himself. The speaker feels like the addressee is making a mistake in refusing the love of the "one man" who loves the addressee for the right reasons—it's a common enough situation that the speaker and addressee don't need to have specific identities for the poem to be effective.

  • “When You Are Old” Setting

    • "When You Are Old" calls upon its addressee—and by extension the reader—to engage in a kind of imaginative time travel. From the first line, though the poem's present hums away in the background, both addressee and reader are implored to imagine a future time in which the addressee is old, grey, and tired. The poem is thus set in this atmosphere of old age, or more precisely, in the way that the speaker imagines it. That is, the poem isn't in the future; it's a prediction of the future. In that sense, then, the setting is in part the speaker's mind.

      The actual scene described is "a little sad" (line 10) and solitary. The addressee doesn't seem to have anyone else around, with "Love" having fled long ago; now the addressee has just the speaker's words and the fire to keep her company. What's more, the speaker asks the addressee, in the future, to take down "this book" in order to presumably read this very same poem. In a strange way, then, the setting of the poem is actually the poem itself!

  • Literary and Historical Context of “When You Are Old”

      Literary Context

      Along with Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats is one of the foremost poets ever to come out of Ireland. He was born in 1865 and began writing around the age of seventeen, and this poem appears in his second collection, The Rose (1893). Yeats's influences were wide and diverse, including the English Romantics—figures such as Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats—and the French Symbolists, such as Stephen Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud. Irish mythology and folklore were also especially formative to his work, particularly given his desire for Ireland's political independence from England. Yeats was also interested in mysticism and the occult.

      With these influences still in mind, however, this particular poem also has one very specific literary influence : a poem by the 16th century French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard. Ronsard's poem, "Quand vous serez bien vielle" (which translates as "when you are very old") is the literary prototype from which Yeats created his own poem. Both comment on unrequited love, and in particular try to point to future literary fame and worth as impending proof that the poems' addressees are making fundamental errors in not reciprocating the speakers' feelings. Ronsard's poem is a sonnet, and Yeats's retains an echo of that form in the way that the poem turns on line 7, revealing its intention to contrast the speaker's love with the allegedly more superficial love of others. And no mention of love when it comes to Yeats would be complete without also mentioning Maud Gonne, an Irish actress and nationalist with whom Yeats was infatuated throughout his life. It's generally agreed by most critics that this poem, as well as many others, is written form Yeats's perspective with Gonne as the intended addressee.

      Historical Context

      Yeats was a prominent public figure, the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was integral to the Irish Literary revival, which in turn was a key part of the Irish push for self-autonomy and the move toward a sense of distinctly Irish culture. Indeed, Yeats's Irish patriotism was in part the reason why so much of his early poetry is filled with references to Irish mythology (though this poem does not contain such references). Many of his poems were overtly political. "Easter, 1916," for example, was written in response to an Irish uprising against British rule that was ultimately unsuccessful. Though Yeats generally eschewed violence as a means of resistance, he had conflicting feelings about those involved in the armed insurrection. Later in life, Yeats tried to distance himself from politics but was frequently brought back into its orbit. In 1922, Ireland descended into civil war.

      Notably, however, this poem contains no mention of any of these developing political and historical complexities; it could almost be set in any time or place. It's perhaps a testament to the depth of the love behind this poem that it completely ignores the historical context that was so meaningful to Yeats in real life, focusing instead of the speaker's ideas about love and its importance.

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