Analysis of the Poem
There is a deep poetic and spiritual connection between William Butler Yeats and William Blake, as Yeats himself has recorded. Yeats wrote a number of essays revealing his admiration for Blake’s artistry and ideology. In his essay, “William Blake and the Imagination,” Yeats credits Blake with understanding that “[p]assions, because most living, are most holy,” going on to describe that the “sensations of this ‘foolish,’ this ‘phantom of the earth and water,’ were in themselves but half-living things, ‘vegetative’ things, but passion, that ‘eternal glory,’ made them a part of the body of God” (Essays and Introductions, 113). As Yeats contemplates the eternal passion that illuminates the lover/writer (clearly thinking of himself) and the recipient (clearly Maud Gonne) whose body will grow old as vegetative things must, he himself demonstrates the same understanding of passion that he argues was what made Blake “more simply a poet than any poet of his time, for it made him content to express every beautiful feeling that came into his head without troubling about its utility or chaining it to any utility” (Essays and Introductions, 113). Surely Yeats’ passion for Maud Gonne was beautiful but futile. Yet the poetry that such passion generated, in particular this love poem, has an eternal value for those who know the depths of passion, of love that needs no use but its purpose of loving.
While some might take exception to reading this poem as an autobiographical expression of Yeats’ love for Maud Gonne and his imagining her as the recipient, Yeats himself insisted in his “General Introduction for My Work “on poetry as a form of autobiography, stating, “A poet writes always of his personal life, in his finest work out of its tragedy" (Essays and Introductions, 509). His tragic love for Maud Gonne, a decades-long unrequited passion that gave rise only to what they termed a “spiritual marriage” rather than a complete intimate partnership, provides the poetic impulse for this lasting love poem and reverie. Most Yeats scholars have long accepted its autobiographical nature. In A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats, John Unterecker identifies “When You Are Old” as one of four love poems written for a manuscript that Yeats was putting together to give to Maud, each poem focused on some “threat” to the beloved, in this case the threat of aging (80).
While most of Yeats’ poems are complex, filled with symbolism and structural variance, “When You Are Old” seems relatively simple and straight-forward. Yet, this small poem continues to resonate with readers who feel a deep human connection to either a lost loved one or the process of aging, or both. The poem foretells a moment of reverie, holding us still in a moment to come that we might all imagine. In his essay “Art and Ideas,” Yeats expresses what draws him to a poet, perhaps giving some insight into why this little poem was made and continues to move people, despite its simplicity. He writes, “Those poets with whom I feel myself in sympathy have tried to give to little poems the spontaneity of a gesture or of some casual emotional phrase” (Essays and Introductions, 354). The gesture of taking down a book that moves one into a powerful memory captures the audience. The casual emotional phrase that jolts the simple poem into the reader’s memory may be the notion that only one “loved the pilgrim soul in you.” Who would not want to be loved for that part of us that wanders and seeks, perhaps for love, for a purposeful life? Despite, or because of, its simplicity, this poem causes readers to enter into it with sympathy. In Yeats’ broadcast on “Modern Poetry,” he says, “A poem is an elaboration of the rhythms of common speech and their association with profound feeling” (Essays and Introductions, 508). The feeling evoked through his simply expressed language is certainly profound, tying together undying love with the dying body, the eternal with the mortal.
While some might take exception to reading this poem as an autobiographical expression of Yeats’ love for Maud Gonne and his imagining her as the recipient, Yeats himself insisted in his “General Introduction for My Work “on poetry as a form of autobiography, stating, “A poet writes always of his personal life, in his finest work out of its tragedy" (Essays and Introductions, 509). His tragic love for Maud Gonne, a decades-long unrequited passion that gave rise only to what they termed a “spiritual marriage” rather than a complete intimate partnership, provides the poetic impulse for this lasting love poem and reverie. Most Yeats scholars have long accepted its autobiographical nature. In A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats, John Unterecker identifies “When You Are Old” as one of four love poems written for a manuscript that Yeats was putting together to give to Maud, each poem focused on some “threat” to the beloved, in this case the threat of aging (80).
While most of Yeats’ poems are complex, filled with symbolism and structural variance, “When You Are Old” seems relatively simple and straight-forward. Yet, this small poem continues to resonate with readers who feel a deep human connection to either a lost loved one or the process of aging, or both. The poem foretells a moment of reverie, holding us still in a moment to come that we might all imagine. In his essay “Art and Ideas,” Yeats expresses what draws him to a poet, perhaps giving some insight into why this little poem was made and continues to move people, despite its simplicity. He writes, “Those poets with whom I feel myself in sympathy have tried to give to little poems the spontaneity of a gesture or of some casual emotional phrase” (Essays and Introductions, 354). The gesture of taking down a book that moves one into a powerful memory captures the audience. The casual emotional phrase that jolts the simple poem into the reader’s memory may be the notion that only one “loved the pilgrim soul in you.” Who would not want to be loved for that part of us that wanders and seeks, perhaps for love, for a purposeful life? Despite, or because of, its simplicity, this poem causes readers to enter into it with sympathy. In Yeats’ broadcast on “Modern Poetry,” he says, “A poem is an elaboration of the rhythms of common speech and their association with profound feeling” (Essays and Introductions, 508). The feeling evoked through his simply expressed language is certainly profound, tying together undying love with the dying body, the eternal with the mortal.
| Previous page on path | Poem, page 1 of 2 | Next page on path |
Discussion of "Analysis of the Poem"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...