Yates Poem, When You Are Old

I am by no means a literary scholar, but I bought a William Butler Yeats collection of Irish Fairy and Folk Tails.  Yates collected these and must have thought that they represented a good selection of work on the Irish imagination. I read a chapter every so often.

Yeats of course, did a "little" writing himself.  And it is the same Irish imagination that Yeats himself used to expand upon when he wrote about the simple facts of life and described longing and love.  What one person might describe as the sad emptiness that an older person may feel towards lost friends and lovers, Yeats could describe it in such a way that makes it ethereal.  

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey 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.

                          —William Butler Yeats

I  like this poem very much because it not only speaks about the lost love, but also says much about the person feeling the loss.  I asked my son who is a graphic artists to take the poem and create a small poster that helps further convey the sense of the poem:












I printed some of these up and make them available.

 http://sportingchancepress.com/spc_posters.html