Poetry Analysis
Running head: POETRY ANALYSIS
Poetry Analysis
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Poetry Analysis
Lissette Valcarcel
South University
An Analysis of William Butler Yeats’ Poem ‘When You Are Old’
One of the most quoted saying concerning love is the saying that true love never dies. While flowers do wilt and their beauty fades over time, true love endures and remains unchanged even when it is rejected or time passes. There is no better way to demonstrate the truthfulness of the above statement than to read the poem ‘When You Are Old’ authored and published in 1893 by the renowned Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In the poem, the author employs the use of imagery as a literary device to show that the subject of the poem is a younger woman, that the persona loves the woman genuinely, that her beauty will fade eventually, and that the person’s love will never end even in death. Comment by Bethany Sreedharan: Sayings Comment by Bethany Sreedharan: Each time you include a quote from the poem, make sure that you include quotation marks and an in-text citation. See this example from the sample student essay in week 1:“And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Couldscarcely cry ‘ 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!’” (Blake, 2013, lines 2-3). Comment by Bethany Sreedharan:
First, William Butler Yeats uses imagery to reveal that the woman being addressed by the persona is younger when in the first two lines of the first stanza he states, “When you are old and grey and full of sleep… nodding by the fire …” The use of the term ‘when’ in the sentence is indicative of the future, implying that in the present the woman is still young. The phrase ‘full of sleep’ conjures up the image of an elderly woman who due to old age will be inactive and will be spending most of her time asleep. This image is further reinforced by the phrase ‘…nodding by the fire…’ which shows that when the woman grows old, her youthful energy and warmth will be extinguished to the point that she will be warming herself by a fire to fight off the cold and dozing off in the seat while warming herself.
Secondly, the poet utilizes imagery to show the persona as being genuinely in love with the woman when he states, “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you…” This phrase appears after the persona has described how as a young woman, the woman had been beautiful, thereby attracting both true and false love from many suitors. The persona however sets himself from the crowd by stating how his love for her remained steadfast because unlike the rest who were attracted by her physical beauty, he saw in her more that her looks, and loved her pilgrim soul. By using the phrase ‘pilgrim soul’, I believe the poet intended to paint the image of a woman who is undergoing a transitional period in her love life since love is an emotion found within the human soul. The transitional period entailed her realizing that she was aging, her beauty fading and that the lovers who gave her false love had deserted her, leaving her heartbroken. Comment by Bethany Sreedharan: Person Comment by Bethany Sreedharan: Your body paragraphs are nicely organized and addressed various elements of imagery throughout the poem.
Thirdly, the author of the poem utilizes imagery to show the temporary nature of beauty when the persona recommends that the woman read the book and ‘…dream of the soft look your eyes had once’ in the first stanza, and again in the last stanza the persona confesses to have ‘…loved the sorrows of your changing face’. This shows that the woman, upon becoming old, will lose the soft look of her youth, which she can only dream of in her old age, and that the changes of her face would bring with them unhappiness and sadness to her. Therefore, the imagery effectively demonstrates that physical beauty does not last.
Lastly, the poet uses imagery to explore the idea that true love does not end even in death when the persona states how the woman would spend her old days sad and regretful for not reciprocating the man’s love for by then, his love will have’…fled and paced upon the mountains overhead and hid his face amid a crowd of stars’. I interpret the quoted statement to mean that by the time the old woman will realize that she lost true love by not loving him back, it will be too late to do anything about it; he will be dead and lovingly looking down at her from beyond the stars.
In conclusion, the poem “When You Are Old” utilizes imagery as an effective way of exploring the concept of love and the issues involved in love. Such imagery is used to not only reveal the age of the woman the persona is in love with but to show that his love for her is genuine. Lastly, imagery is used to show how physical beauty fades over time due to age and lastly, that true love endures forever.
References
Poetry Foundation (2017) William Butler Yeats: When You Are Old (1893). Comment by Bethany Sreedharan: See the sample reference entry from the week 1 lecture:Blake, W. (2013). The chimney sweeper. In X.J Kennedy and D Gioia (Eds.) The LiteratureCollection: An E-Text [VitalSource digital version] (p. 239). Boston, MA: PearsonEducation, Inc.
Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43283/when-you-are-old