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When You Are Old William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats wrote this poem to express his unrequited love for Maud Gonne, a womanwho had rejected his love several times but inspired many of his poems.

Stanza 1: Imagery of Death

The story is of a young woman in the present looking to the past because it is WHEN You Are Oldrather than NOW That You Are Old

STANZA 1

When you are oldandgrayandfull of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

When Yeats says old and gray and full of sleep he asks Gonne to think about the future whenshe will become old and possibly impending death.

Due to the punctuation and the words/phrases of full of sleep and nodding by the fire the

lines give readers a feeling of calmness and soothes the mood of the reader. At the same time,the tone is mysterious.

The lines use ten syllables of iambic pentameter: when / YOU / are / OLD / and / GREY /and / FULL / of / SLEEP.

Yeats portrays meter in the poem when he uses the word and several times in the stanza. This

gives the stanza a rhythmic beat and structure. It also extends the poem giving it a feeling of

aging that Yeats is trying to express.

The book Yeats is referring to is a notebook he kept with letters Gonne used to send to himwhile they were establishing the Abbey Theater in Dublin, Ireland.

Andslowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of theirshadows deep,

Yeats asks Gonne to read the book slowly, reminiscing the moments they spent together,

thinking about the love that could have been.

He uses words such as slowly, soft and shadows to give the reader a sense that time islost and that it is no longer relative because your are thinking about the memories of the past.

STANZA 2

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

In order to contrast the darkness of the last stanza, Yeats uses the word love in this stanza to

lighten the mood of the reader.

Yeats is telling Gonne about the people who enjoyed her physical features, whether it is false

or true. He uses words like grace and beauty which are vague and empty descriptions. Hethen uses pilgrim soul to contrast his strong feelings for her against other people.

When Yeats uses the phrase pilgrim soul he is saying that he loved her for who she was as aperson and not only her physical features.

In the last two lines of the stanza, Yeats reveals for the first time, his attraction and love for

Gonne. The sorrows of your changing face further reveal that Yeats has loved Gonne despiteany of her sorrowful experiences, which people in love are inevitably involved in.

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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 Yeats says bending down besides the glowing bars, the reader and Gonne are sent back

into the real world from the ethereal visions he portrayed earlier. He further implements themelancholy mood of the poem by enforcing a feel of remorse to Gonne. She is sitting by thewarmth of the fire regretting the missed opportunity of the past years that have gone.

- Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled reveals that Yeats love for Gonne fled and was never

returned. She murmurs to herself because now, she is all alone in her impending death. This line

shows that Gonne would feel remorse if she didnt accept Yeats love but not in a warningmanner.

- And paced upon the mountains overhead describes that path of Yeats unrequited love.

- hid his face amid a crowd of stars This line could describe the path of their lost love hiding

among a crowd of starts or, based on certain beliefs, people become stars when they die so

Yeats is telling Gonne that he will be among those stars before she can accept his love so she

should do so now or shell be sorry.- The ending of the poem has imagery that signifies a feeling of loneliness and the death of their

love going to the sky among the stars, a place that cannot be reached.

Literary Devices Used:

2 slides per stanza, first slide on literary devices and second on analysis.

When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats is a

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