This poem reflects on love and aging. It describes how two lovers who were once young and in love will grow old. It suggests taking down this poem when older and remembering the deep shadows of one's eyes from youth and all those who loved their beauty. However, it notes that one man loved the pilgrim soul within and changing face through sorrow, not just for moments of glad grace. It ends with bending beside the fire and murmuring how love once paced overhead and hid among the stars.
This poem reflects on love and aging. It describes how two lovers who were once young and in love will grow old. It suggests taking down this poem when older and remembering the deep shadows of one's eyes from youth and all those who loved their beauty. However, it notes that one man loved the pilgrim soul within and changing face through sorrow, not just for moments of glad grace. It ends with bending beside the fire and murmuring how love once paced overhead and hid among the stars.
This poem reflects on love and aging. It describes how two lovers who were once young and in love will grow old. It suggests taking down this poem when older and remembering the deep shadows of one's eyes from youth and all those who loved their beauty. However, it notes that one man loved the pilgrim soul within and changing face through sorrow, not just for moments of glad grace. It ends with bending beside the fire and murmuring how love once paced overhead and hid among the stars.
All other lovers being estranged or dead, Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade, The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night, That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.
William Butler Yeats, “When You Are Old”
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.
The Poetry Of Radclyffe Hall - Volume 3 - A Sheaf Of Verses: "The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth."
The Poetry Of Rainer Maria Rilke: "Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers."