by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)
When you are old and gray and full of...
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Language: English
When you are old and gray 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.
G. Bachlund sets stanzas 1-2
F. Bridge sets stanzas 1-2
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View text with all available footnotesConfirmed with The Poetical Works of William B. Yeats in two volumes, volume 1 : Lyrical Poems, The Macmillan Company, New York and London, 1906, page 179. Note: this poem is often described as a free adaptation of Ronsard's Quand vous serez bien vieille.
Text Authorship:
- by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), "When you are old", appears in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics, appears in The Rose, first published 1892 [author's text checked 2 times against a primary source]
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Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 102