Reading Notes W13, William Butler Yeats, Part A

“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” - This was a truth that modernists were skeptical of because they feared emotions. Instead they sought precision and clarity instead of self-expression.
William Butler Yeats, who was one of the greatest English-language poets stressed the power of masterful images which you can see throughout his poems. He was a major voice of modern, independent Ireland. He captivated imagery and fusion of history and vision that stirred readers around the world.

The poem, "When You Are Old " one can assume he is speaking of his lover, who in the introduction of the author was an actress by the name of Maud Gonne. As mentioned, he was in love with her, but she repeatedly refused his proposal to marriage. Through the imagery the author, readers can visualize a woman in her old age, alone, sitting in a chair by the fireplace with the author’s book in her hand reminiscing on her life and, is filled with regret. “How many loved your moments of glad grace and loved your beauty with love false or true” The author suggests that many of the men of her youth loved her for her external glory, beauty, and fame. While reminding her in the next line how his love was not shallow, but he loved her beyond her external beauty. He reminds her that “he loved the pilgrim soul within her” that this type of love last beyond the aging of her external beauty. Again, You can see her staring at the glowing bars, which could be the embers of fire, remember how the author, out of all the men that once loved her was now lost to her. All she is left with is the memory of him fading in the distance “and hid his face amid a crowd of stars” (522).

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