The joy of "When you are old"

"When you are old," recited by Cillian Murphy. Or, if you prefer, by Collin Farrell.

Here is an effort to make sense of the words.

"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.

“When You Are Old” Summary

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.

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.

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.