William Butler Yeats expresses his love for the girl in the poem “When You Are Old”. He mentioned that others may love the girl because of her beauty, but he loves her noble soul. Yeats is telling the girl his true feelings, even after she gets older, it remains the same. When the hypothesis of “when you are old” mentioned in the poem, from the words “grey and fall of sleep, and nodding by the fire”, we seem to be able to see the scene of the “aging” moment, which is so vivid and imaginable. Getting older is a process that everyone will experience. Although most people are unwilling to face it, this is an irresistible natural law. It can be seen that the Yeats’ love is beyond the time and the external beauty of the person.
3 thoughts on ““When You Are Old” is obviously a very romantic poem but it is also about aging.”
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I completely agree with this post. Yeats is clearly in love with this guy despite the fact that she is not as beautiful, on the outside, anymore due to her age. He loves, and has always loved her, for her inner beauty.
This is a great observation about the poem. I also picked up on the theme of aging and getting old, but I interpreted it a little differently. I thought that Yeats’ last stanza, in particular, was a little dark, saying how the woman he’s writing about remember “a little sadly, how Love fled,” meaning that when she gets older, she’ll realize what a mistake she’d made. The object of Yeats’ affection, in my opinion, did not return his love, and instead went with someone else who didn’t appreciate her. He’s basically saying that when time goes by, she’ll realize she made the wrong choice.
I agree with the idea that Yeats loved the woman even as she aged. This was an important part of the poem because it showed that Yeat’s love was real and not based solely on her appearance. The woman took Yeats’s love for granted though, because even though he saw past the exterior of this girl she may have been to blinded by her admirers to realize what true love actually looked like.