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"When you are old" Maud Gonne

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"When you are old"


This poem,dedicated to Maud Gonne, is an example of the love poetry he wrote before35 years. The composition is full of mythical imagery. The poet imagines her in front of a fire and he asks her to read a book of his life to record the most important moments. The journey from youth to old is briefly traced in a few phrases, suggesting the reality of sorrow. The images are stark but flowing. The first two lines suggest comfort in old age. Death is not a violent end but something one 'falls into' as easily as sleep. The phrase 'full of sleep' both carries the broad connotation of death, and describes the sleeping that leads to dreaming. Reading, then, these words, she begins to dream about the past and her own youth. The second stanza is descriptive of her dream of the past. As a transition from the first stanza into the second, she remembers her own 'soft look,' her eyes and 'their shadows deep.' From this image of her youthful she is reminded of those who loved her 'moments of glad grace' and her 'beauty with love false or true.' Both 'grace' and 'beauty' are vague and nondescript, yet these lines work to contrast those who loved these general aspects of her with the 'one man' who loved her pilgrim soul. This seems to suggest a love willing to journey into age as a companion with her, still loving the 'sorrows' of her 'changing face' as she shifts through the years. The deep shadows of her eyes, the vague 'soft look' becomes more concrete as one imagines her 'changing face' and the sorrows that come through experience. Yet, the one man who forsees in her pilgrim soul the inevitability of growing old, and is still willing to love her, is apparently rejected by her, possibly in favor of those who temporarily love her 'grace' and 'beauty.  The dream continues as she bends 'down beside the glowing bars' of the fire, perhaps seeking warmth or comfort. From this concrete image the dream again expands, and we see Love, capitalized as an absolute, fleeing, effortlessly into mountainous distances. His face hid 'amid a crowd of stars,' an abstract image issuing from a more concrete description of loneliness and regret, speaks to that which is beyond her reach. The dominant mood is one of serenity, of melancholy and memory.






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