WHEN YOU ARE OLD

 

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

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.

 

            This is one of the most famous lyrical poems of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).  It is addressed to Maud Gonne, a lady whom he loved madly, wanted to marry, proposed twice but in vain. She married another man, saddened Yeats who could not forget her throughout his life and tells her in this poem that now when she is old and her physical charm  has vanished and there is no romantic vigour in her  body, her  lovers of youthful times, both true and false, have disappeared. But he, the poet, who instead of  loving  her physical charm,  t loved her pilgrim soul, is still there.

 

            The poem talks of the spiritual side of love which is better judged in old age     

 when physical attractions of the body disappear and a lover  needs a faithful companion to be still there with the ‘sorrows of her changing face.’

 

            Yeats won Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.  He was also a sort of  mystic who introduced Rabindranath Tagore to Europe and also wrote a Preface to the English version of his Gitanjali. Tagore was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

 

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G.R.Kanwal

15^th September 2023