And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
In the poem "When you are
Old" by William Butler Yeats, the central theme of love can be found in
the poem's use of imagery and language. In his poem, these two fundamentals of
writing elegantly work together to create a piece that represents the nostalgic
elements and depressing characteristics of lost love.
The poem begins with the image of an
elderly woman, "gray and old and full of sleep", who is sitting by a
fire and reminiscing about "the soft look" her eyes held once. She
takes down the book that holds Yeats poem as she remembers how beautiful and
young she once was. This scene is very powerful because it sets the mood and
tone for the entire poem. If the woman had been in the kitchen or in the
basement, rather than in a living room near a glowing fire, the feeling of
longing and remembrance might not have been as strong. In most houses, living
rooms hold the memories, displaying framed pictures of family members on their
walls and sentimental items of their shelves.
Yeats also uses a variety of symbols
to illustrate the power and melancholy elements of love. The first symbol he
uses is of a fire, which the old woman is "nodding" beside. Like all
fires, once vibrant and flickering with life, she too will fade and burn out
eventually. Nothing lasts forever, and in this poem the elderly woman realizes
that the only man who loved her has gone away. The fire symbolizes her desire
for warmth or comfort and her want for the fiery love she once rejected. To
further illustrate the fleeting capabilities of love, in the 3rd stanza Yeats
writes that she bent "down besides the glowing bars," as if to imply
that the fire had burnt down already and now she has to possibly use an
electric heater.
The last two symbols of the
"mountains overhead" and the "crowdof stars" go hand in
hand. They both symbolize something the elderly woman can always see and always
know is there, but never fully reach. She can take down a book of poetry and
reminisce about her past love, but he is no longer with her or just no longer
around. Like the mountains and the stars, he is unobtainable. Another
interpretation of these two symbols could be that they imply her
"Love," capitalized in the poem to possibly entail personification,
has passed away and is now in heaven "among a crowd" of other loves
she might have lost. However, if the narrator is Yeats, then the death of her
love might more so symbolize the near fatal affects some people suffer from a
broken heart.
Language is also very imperative to
the construction and meaning of a poem. In "When You Are Old,"
language plays a key role in its musicality, mood, and aesthetic qualities.
First, the way Yeats chose to write this poem influences the overall feeling a
reader gets from reading it. The poem is written in second person, rather than
first or third, which makes the poem not only more intimate, but also very sad.
Writing in the second person gives the poem a regretful tone, as if the
narrator were saying what he wished she would have done and should have
realized. Yeats' poem is written like an addressed note or letter, telling the
elderly woman what do to when she is old. This poem is more so like a list of
directions because the narrator is literally instructing the woman on what to
do and as she does those things, she consequently reflects on the knowledge she
is gaining.
In addition, Yeats uses alliteration,
stressing the consonant sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed
syllables. The use of this technique adds to the pace and the sad mood of the
poem, as well as making the lines more memorable. Since one of the overriding
themes of this poem is reflecting on memories from the past, using alliteration
to make the lines easy to remember seems appropriate. A good example of
alliteration in the poem can be found in line 9: "And bending down beside
the glowing bars." Also, alliteration is used in the constant repetition
of the word "love" throughout the poem and in the first stanza's use
of the words "sleep", "slowly", "soft", and
"shadows."
Assonance, the repetition of similar
vowel sounds, is also heavily used in this poem. In each stanza, Yeats utilizes
this technique in order to give the poem a softer and dreamy sound.
Traditionally assonance makes a poem sound more like music, which one can hear
if they pay attention to the sounds. At first, it may be hard to recognize the
similar vowel sounds, but with a close reading one can easily pick them out and
see how they add to the overall sound of the poem: "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;"
This poem, written in iambic
pentameter, also follows the "abba" rhyme scheme, which Yeats
probably intended to give the poem a fixed rhythm. Doing so provides the poem
with more romantic, attractive, and hypnotic qualities. The rhyming almost
hypnotizes the reader, like staring at a fire sometimes does. In his rhyming,
Yeats uses almost all masculine rhymes such as "book" and
"look"; "grace" and "face"; and "bars"
and "stars." The only feminine word is "overhead," but even
that word rhymes with the masculine word "fled." Possibly Yeats did
this to over emphasize that the narrator was a man or to give the poem a
harsher sound to illustrate the bitterness and regret the narrator might have
over never being recognized by his love.
Everything in this poem makes sense
once the reader understands it in its context. William Butler Yeats, the famous
Irish poet, met the love of his life in 1889 at twenty four years old. Her name
was Maud Gonne and like him, she was heavily into Irish politics, mythology,
and history. He thought her a brilliant and passionate woman, and soon he fell
in love with her. However, when he asked for her hand in marriage, she refused
his proposal. This he contended later, caused the problems of his life to
begin. This poem is most likely about his first true love, who rejected him.
She never understood until it was too late that he was not one of the men who
"loved [only her] beauty with love false or true," but more so her
"pilgrim soul" and the "sorrows of [her] changing face." He
would have been there with her into her old age and loved her despite her
fading beauty. Yet, she allowed love to flee and become extinguished like the
fire in her living room soon will be. Now she can only murmur, as those who are
alone might do instead of speaking aloud, testifying to her isolation and
reiterating the disposition of the poem, "a little sadly."
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