Wednesday 25 January 2023

When you are old....


W B Yeats has always been one of my favourite poets (and writers), and this particular poem is amongst my best-loved. I have no idea why, but it has been going around inside in my head recently. The poem was written about his great love, the Irish activist Maud Gonne, to whom he proposed on various occasions; always being rejected. 


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 once had, 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.


23 comments:

  1. A beautiful poem to a beautiful and strong woman

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    1. I wonder why she regularly rejected him.

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    2. Not sure..I will have to read the book by her and the book about her again, when we return to Scotland

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  2. I have never inspired anyone enough to write a poem about me. Maud obviously didn't know what she was rejecting!

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  3. Possibly she was too involved with the politics of that time

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    1. She did eventually marry, but it didn't last. Maybe she just wasn't meant to be a 'wife'.

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  4. A sad poem of unrequited love. I wonder how the same sentiments would be phrased today?

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  5. I am also a fan of William Butler Yeats and studied his poetry when I was at university. I still love "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and the longing it contains with which most humans can identify.

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    1. His 'Mythologies' is probably my 'desert island' book. I never tire of reading it.

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  6. I am a little startled as to your question why she didn't marry him despite repeated proposals. Why would she? Because he was Yeats? From a purely practical point of view it's impossible to marry everyone who is intrigued by you (and vice versa). And then, and I swear by it, there is gut feeling. One may be hook line and sinker drawn to someone (be it "spiritually"/physically or, ideally, a combo of the two) but, on some level, you know it would be madness to "consummate" your relationship or, worse, tie the knot legally. Thus you save yourself and the other.

    He is said to have been infatuated with her. Infatuation is not love. Infatuation is a dish best kept on a low simmer and, if tended well, may plate up as a life long friendship without all the complications of marital "bliss". And what a rich source continued disappointment is - for a poet. Not that all poetry feeds on misery.

    U

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    1. I'm not sure if they even had a wee 'fling'. Perhaps he was simply too pushy.

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  7. I have not read it before Cro. Beautiful.

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    1. I've had that first verse in my head for more than a week. I thought it was time I wrote it down.

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  8. Unions based on infatuation usually fail. Maybe she knew this and he did not. Lovely poem, filled with emotion.

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    1. Whatever happened, I think she made a disastrous marriage. They were soon divorced and he was later hanged (or shot) as an Irish 'terrorist'.

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  9. Had I the heavens embroidered cloths....
    My favourite poem.

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  10. Just came across this..it may be of interest. Adds a little history
    Happy birth anniversary to ...
    "...Irish statesman, co-founder of Amnesty International, and winner of the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize, Seán MacBride, born in Paris (1904). He's the son of Maud Gonne, the woman whom poet W.B. Yeats worshipped and embraced as his Muse. Sean's father was Major John MacBride, a military leader whom Gonne chose to marry over Yeats and whom Yeats considered a "brute." John MacBride and Maud Gonne separated when their son was a child, and Sean grew up in Paris with his mother, speaking French as a first language. He was still in France, age 12, when his father was executed for helping to lead the Easter Rising, the 1916 rebellion where Irish nationalists took over government buildings in an effort to force the end British rule of Ireland.

    But not long after the Easter Rising, Sean MacBride headed to Ireland, joined the IRA, and fought in the Irish War of Independence from Britain. Then he was imprisoned by the new Irish Free State's government during the Irish Civil War that followed, because he was opposed to the terms of the Anglo-Irish treaty, which had come at the end of the war. When Sean MacBride got out of jail, he went to law school.

    He worked as a lawyer for human rights cases around the world, investigating abuses by governments against civilians, especially ones that happened in times of war. He was one of the founders of the human rights group Amnesty International, and held several United Nations posts throughout his life, including Assistant Secretary-General and President of the General Assembly. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 (exactly 10 years after Martin Luther King Jr.) for mobilizing "the conscience of the world in the fight against injustice." About a year after that, he was given the Lenin Peace Prize, making him at the time the only person in the world to get both Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes.

    Source: Writer's Almanac Newsletter

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