When You Are Old

William Butler Yeats’s “When You Are Old,” is more than just a typical story of lost love. At first glance, the poem seems as though it is about an older woman who is reminiscing through a photo album of her youth and beauty, slowly moving to the end, where it seems she has lost a significant other; however, after stripping away the obvious layers, it is apparent that there is a deeper and more personalized side to the poem.

Yeats had one significant love in his life, Maud Gonne. He proposed to her four times, each time receiving a negative response. Finally, Maud married another man by the name of Major John MacBride, breaking Yeats’s heart. Although Yeats realized that he lost Maud to another man, he always saved a part of his heart for her, which I think can be seen through the poem, “When You Are Old.” The speaker of the poem, Yeats, is delivering a message to Maud, reminding her what might have been, if she had chosen him over his rival. Yeats wants Maud to know that his love was deeper than any other and would have loved her through the years regardless of her lost physical beauty.

The three stanzas of the poem show a transition from simplicity to complexity. The first stanza is pretty straightforward beginning with an old woman, by herself, looking back on her life, specifically referring to her eyes—“the soft look…and of their shadows deep.” By using the word shadows, Yeats wants Maud to reminisce through the years, remembering all the choices she had when she was young and the implications they had on her life.

In the second stanza, he moves on to talk about all the people that loved her and her, “beauty with love false or true.” He considers everyone else’s love for her trivial, unknowing of whether they really loved her or if it was that they were simply infatuated with her beauty. He changes tones in the second half, by saying that one man really loved her, no matter what. “The pilgrim soul,” he calls it—he compares her life to a journey, one with happiness and sorrow, with him truly loving her every second of it. His love for her did more than just scratch the surface, his love transcended mere looks—he loved her whole being. No matter what she went through, he never gave up on his feelings towards her.

The third stanza, unlike the first two uses many hidden meanings and personifies love. Yeats uses the poem to tell Maud that by not accepting his love that she has lost a tremendous opportunity. When she wed Major MacBride, Yeats had to take his love for her and leave. As he completes the poem, Yeats seems to be referring more to what he did after fleeing from Maud. His reference to mountains indicates a long journey that put great distance between him and Maud; in addition, using the term “paced” would indicate that he had no real purpose in his journey. Pacing normally is done when one is nervous or expectant and rarely accomplishes anything but passing the time. The final line of the poem indicates he wanted to hide not only from Maud but also from everyone else. Yeats wants to lose himself in the crowd, where he will go unnoticed.

Overall the poem has a very sad connotation, speaking of lost love, unrealized potential, and journeys without purpose. Yeats assumes that both his and Maud’s life were shortchanged due to her decision to marry another, and he wants to make sure she understands the repercussions of refusing his love. (617)


Discussion Questions:

1) After finding out about Yeats’s past with Maud Gonne, do you agree that the poem is addressed to her or do you think that it is talking about lost love in general?

2) Assuming Yeats is the speaker, do you think he is talking about himself as the one man that, “loved the pilgrim soul….?”

3) Why does Yeats personify “Love?” Whose love has “fled?” The man or the woman?

4) Do you think that by the third stanza, the man/woman has given up on love?