When You Are Old
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 lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty will 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 barsMurmur, a little sadly, how love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Words in this poem
- sadly adv.
- Wearily; heavily; firmly.
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
When You Are Old is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #38877; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. B. Yeats, When You Are Old, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38877, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-poems/when-you-are-old.html, id L16657.
Form and metre
When You Are Old is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBA sleepA · bookB · lookB · deepA
- 2 ABBA graceA · trueB · youB · faceA
- 3 ABBA barsA · fledB · overheadB · starsA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When you are old and gray and full of sleep, | 10 | ·········· |
| And nodding by the fire, take down this book, | 10 | ·/˘··/···· |
| And slowly read, and dream of the soft look | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; | 10 | ·······/·· |
| How many loved your moments of glad grace, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| And loved your beauty will love false or true; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And loved the sorrows of your changing face. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And bending down beside the glowing bars | 10 | ·/˘·˘/·/˘· |
| Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled | 10 | /˘·/˘/˘··· |
| And paced upon the mountains overhead | 10 | ·····/˘/˘/ |
| And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. | 10 | ····˘/···· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.