Yeats When You Are Old Summary

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Poetry Analysis - Emily Rabone
Today I’m here to talk to you about the purpose and use of different poems and how poets display their history and knowledge within their poems. In doing so, I will explore and analyse William B Yeats’ poem ‘When You Are Old’ written in 1893, and talk about how he has portrayed the topic of love and other relationships through this poem. The theme of love, romance and other relationships is a large aspect of our lives, for this reason many author’s, poets, and others, use this theme to construct their works. William B Yeats is an Irish poet who grew up with a father who was a painter and undertook studies to further his education and study painting, he soon realised that poetry was his preferred vocation. His writing at the turn of the century was extensively based on Irish mythology and folklore. The poem ‘When you are old’ by William B Yeats encapsulates the theme of love and romance through the journey of a life time.

When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray 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.

The chosen poem represents the theme of love, romance and other relationships through the journey of life and the changes which happen from a young age to old age. William B Yeats was born in 1965 in Dublin, Ireland, ...

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...uality by sound without repeating word for word each line. This helps to create and image of old age and love due to the use of words. The use of the word ‘and’ helps in slowing down the reader and encourages them to read the poem with more thought about what is being said, this slow reading pace also relates to the slower pace which come with older age.

The theme of love, romance and other relationships is represented in William B Yeats poem, ‘When You Are Old’ and the idea of the journey of an individual’s life is used to represent this theme. Yeats describes the love of his life throughout the poem and his feeling that, although many people may love her, he is the only one that truly loves her for her outer beauty and her inner soul. He tries to portray to all that as life keeps going, if you truly love someone for their soul then you will always love them.

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