A to Z Poetry: Yeats

Today we'll change it up a bit and feature one of the twentieth centuries most prominent poets, W. B. Yeats Nobel Laureate from Ireland.

"Yeats is generally considered one of the twentieth century's key English language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. Yeats chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest other abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols^[78] is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.^[79] Unlike other modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the traditional forms.^[80] The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet.^[81] His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter,^[82] as well as meditations on the experience of growing old."

William Butler Yeats photographed in 1911 by George Charles Beresford

Here is an example of one of those meditations:

When You are Old

  by W. B. Yeats

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;

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.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15526#sthash.S8NN4cNW.dpuf

 When You Are Old

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;

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.

-------------------

Today's Haiku

Haiku Heights April A to Z: Youngling

Younglings gather

'Round the storyteller

 Mysteries alive

Carpe Diem: Under the willow

under the willow

napping cat

mice play 

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; 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. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15526#sthash.S8NN4cNW.dpuf

When You are Old

  by W. B. Yeats

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;

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.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15526#sthash.S8NN4cNW.dpuf

When You are Old

  by W. B. Yeats

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;

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.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15526#sthash.S8NN4cNW.dpuf

When You are Old

  by W. B. Yeats

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;

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.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15526#sthash.S8NN4cNW.dpuf