When you are old (Poem)


  • W.B Yeats’ biography
  • —W.B Yeats’ biography
  • —W.B Yeats was born in Sandymond,Dublin on 13 June 1865 and died on January 281939
  • —He  was a well known poet, dramatist and prose writer
  • —He is one of the greatest poets of 20th century
  • —Yeats was a proud man his pride required him to relay on his own taste and his sense of artistic style
  • —He is the most celebrated significant  modern poet
  • —He received  the Noble Prize for Literature in 1923

—Con….


  • —Written in Oct 1891 and published in 1893
  • —Before  three years of  its publication he met with the beautiful lady Maud Gonne
  • —This literary work was dedicated to her
  • —Their relationship was very complicated and had many Ups and downs.

— —SUMMARY


  • Conception of love
  • Love is spiritual rather than physical, lives on the peak of mountain.
  • Poet’s powerful sense of sad change.
  • Beauty fades, love dies
  • Nothing has permanence but Pilgrim’s Soul.
  • Poet’s regret and melancholy.
  • Fine example of poet’s lyricism
  • Vague but expressive ideas.

— —THEME


  • —Old  Age.
  • —Fleeting nature of love
  • —Graying hair, dying beauty
  • —Love vanishes in to the mountains
  • —Imagination of the poet about his beloved
  • —Love, its type
  • —Transience of love.

— —STANZA 1


  • —The Poet addresses Maud Gonne
  • —His imagination about her beloved ,and her old age
  • —Compares her old age with time of her youth
  • —Feeling sleepy and nodding by the fire side she can compare her grey hair with the softness of look and prime of her life
  • —He wants Maud Gonne to have a feel of terror that old age produces
  • —Laziness of human being  as he or she  grows old
— —STANZA II


  • —In this stanza the poet asks Maud Gonne to recollect as how many people loved her when she was young and beautiful
  • —The Poet tells about two types of lovers of her beloved
  • —Considers himself only the true lover
  • —Loved the purity of her soul
  • —Moment of  glad grace(the period of Maud Gonne’s youth)
— —STANZA III


  • —The Poet further tells that, his beloved in her old age would bend down
  • —She would feel that love has left the world and lives now in the stars and mountains
  • —Feeling of loneliness of old age
  • —Beauty and love are short lived
— —STYLE


  • —The poet displays the skill of great master  in the matter of detail
  • —He is able to build up his picture in words that are at once simple and vivid
  • —The words he chooses are full of association
  • —An atmosphere of regret
  • —The vagueness of the word and their effectiveness

—CONCLUSION


  • —In a nutshell, the poet wants to tell that love beauty and charm  can not exist  or remain for good but if there is any thing everlasting, that is the spiritual beauty for which the poet uses the term the Pilgrim’s soul.