When You are Old
When You are Old
Original Text
Yeats, William Butler. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poetry: 17. Ed. by A. Norman Jeffares. London: Macmillan, 1968.
1When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
2And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
3And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
4Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
5How many loved your moments of glad grace,
6And loved your beauty with love false or true,
7But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
8And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
9And bending down beside the glowing bars,
10Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
11And paced upon the mountains overhead
12And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Publication Start Year
1893
Publication Notes
The Rose, 1893.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh
RPO Edition
2009
Rhyme
Form