Youth Matters: W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old” and “Politics”

Almost half a lifetime went by between the compositions of “When You Are Old” and “Politics,” and yet it is startlingly clear from the diction of both poems that their writer, whose focus might have shifted from the personal to the political, was as preoccupied with the subject of (lost) youth in his last days as when he was in his thirties.  

When You Are Old (from The Rose, 1893)

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

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;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

In “When You Are Old,” the speaker is addressing a woman (biographers have claimed this to be Yeats’ unrequited love Maud Gonne) and telling her about impending old age (“When you are old and grey and full of sleep”). The speaker’s tone is tenderly persuasive: “Take down this book / And slowly read, and dream of the soft look / Your eyes had once…” This suggests that the speaker is instructing the woman, who is not yet old, to imagine a scene where she is old and reminiscing about her youth (“And dream of the soft look / Your eyes had once”).  In her reminiscences, she is asked to reflect on how many have “loved your beauty with love false or true.” The speaker, however, insists that there is only one man who has loved her past her beauty (“the pilgrim soul in you,” “the sorrows of your changing face”), and the reader may at this point infer that the man in question is the mysterious speaker himself.

The last stanza is weighed down by a tone of old-age remorse. The woman is said to “murmur, a little sadly” about how Love has forsaken her. The abstract nature of the last two lines is intentional, pressing home the point that when Love is lost, it is irretrievable.

“Politics,” written in the poet’s slightly more advanced age, bears the same stamp of longing for lost youth:

Politics (from Last Poems, 1939)

'In our time the destiny of man prevents its meanings
in political terms.' -- Thomas Mann.

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

The speaker, presumably Yeats himself, asks rhetorically how he can “fix” his attention on politics with “that girl standing there.” He accepts that there are men out there (German writer Thomas Mann may be one of them) who have read, talked, and thought deeply about political matters and warfare; but for himself he is not sure if politics is what life is about (“And maybe what they say is true”). The poem’s final two lines are clear: the speaker wishes he were young again so that he could fall in love and embrace “that girl standing there.” It is a life-affirming poem that pays tribute to the power of youth and love; yet there is a melancholy whisper to it telling us that once youth is gone, all one can do is to fantasise about it in perpetual regret.