When You Are Old

The speaker is addressing....

• a young woman he has loved

• an old lady he has met now

• The woman he has admired in his life

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In line two the word 'book' refers to

• memories

• book of poems

• an album

• a diary

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The phrase 'glad grace' refers to

• her physical beauty

• her inner beauty

• her goodness

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'pilgrim soul' means

• the soul that is immortal

• the soul that has gone on a pilgrimage

• the soul that quest for true love

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What does the phrase 'your changing face' suggests?

• the beauty and youth will fade away

• the riches now will fade away

• all relatives will desert her

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'love fled' connotes

• the death of the man who loved her

• the fleeing of her over to the mountains

• the loss endured by her

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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; explain

The speaker directly addresses someone else and asks this person to imagine old age, a time of grey hair and general tiredness. The speaker tells the addressee to pick up this book when they're falling asleep by the fire, and to read from it, while dreaming of the soft and shadowed look the addressee's own eyes used to have.

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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;

The addressee should also think of how many people loved the addressee's gracefulness and beauty, whether or not these people were sincere in their love. But there was one man who genuinely loved the addressee's emotional and spiritual restlessness. This man also loved the sadness that showed on the addressee's face as it changed over the years.

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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 speaker imagines the addressee bending down to tend to a fire and muttering sadly about how love ran away to walk restlessly in the mountains and hide among the stars of the night.

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"When You Are Old" is a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In the poem, which is published in Yeats's second collection, The Rose (1893), the speaker asks someone to think ahead to old age, strongly suggesting that the addressee will eventually regret being unwilling to return the speaker's love. Most critics agree that the poem is about Yeats's relationship with Maud Gonne, an Irish actress and nationalist. Though the poem is one of the best-loved of Yeats's works, many people don't realize that it is based on a much earlier sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard, a 16th century French Renaissance poet.

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