When You Are Old

By W. B. Yeats

“When You Are Old” is a 12-line love poem by W. B. Yeats, written in October 1891 and first published in 1892, in which the speaker asks a woman to imagine herself old, reading this book by the fire and remembering the one man who loved her “pilgrim soul.” It was inspired by Maud Gonne, the Irish revolutionary who refused to marry Yeats, and it freely adapts a 16th-century French sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard.

It reads as a tender poem, but it is also an argument the speaker wins by skipping ahead fifty years. The “book” she takes down is the poem itself, so the poem plants itself in her future and waits there to be proved right.

At a Glance

Poet
W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)
Written
October 1891, when Yeats was 26
First published
The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (T. Fisher Unwin, 1892)
Collected in
Poems (1895), in the group of early lyrics Yeats called “The Rose”
Subject
Yeats’s love for Maud Gonne, adapted from Ronsard’s sonnet “Quand vous serez bien vieille” (1578)
Form
Lyric in three quatrains of enclosed rhyme (ABBA CDDC EFFE)
Length
12 lines
Meter
Iambic pentameter (“when YOU are OLD and GREY and FULL of SLEEP”)
Era
Victorian
Best-known lines
“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face”

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker addresses a woman he loves and asks her to picture herself old, gray, and drowsy by the fire. When that day comes, she should take down this book, read it slowly, and remember how her eyes once looked.

Many people loved her beauty and charm, he says, some sincerely and some not. But one man loved her restless “pilgrim soul” and even the sorrows that showed in her face as it changed. In the last stanza, she leans toward the fire and murmurs, a little sadly, that Love left her: he climbed the mountains and hid his face among the stars.

The Poem

The text below follows the first printing, in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892).

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.

Background

Yeats wrote “When You Are Old” in October 1891, when he was 26. Two years earlier, he had met Maud Gonne, a tall, fiercely political English-born woman who had devoted herself to Irish independence, and he had fallen in love at once. He proposed for the first time in 1891. She refused, as she would refuse him again and again over the next quarter century, and she became the central figure of his love poetry.

The poem was first published in 1892 in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics, and Yeats later placed it in the group of early lyrics he called “The Rose.” It is a loose version of a famous sonnet by the French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard, “Quand vous serez bien vieille” (“When you are very old”), from his Sonnets pour Hélène of 1578. Ronsard’s poem ends with a warning to seize the day and love the poet now, before it is too late. Yeats drops the threat and keeps the fireside scene, turning a seduction into something closer to a farewell.

Maud Gonne did grow old. She married the soldier John MacBride in 1903 and lived until 1953, long enough to read the poem as the old woman it imagines.

Analysis and Themes

“When You Are Old” is usually read as a gentle poem about true love outlasting beauty. That reading is right, but the poem is also cleverer and more pointed than it first sounds. It works by moving through time, by setting one lover against many, and by letting Love itself leave the room.

A Poem That Waits in Her Future

The instruction “take down this book” is the poem’s masterstroke. The book is the one she is holding now, the one that contains these lines. Yeats writes a poem that describes the moment it will be reread, decades later, and so turns it into a kind of time capsule. Whatever she decides today, the poem will be waiting on the shelf, and when she opens it, she will find it has already described her.

One Man Against the Crowd

The middle stanza is built on a single contrast. “How many” loved her “moments of glad grace” and her beauty, “with love false or true.” Even the true love of the many is love of surfaces. “But one man” loved two things nobody else did: her “pilgrim soul,” the restless, searching spirit that kept her moving from cause to cause, and “the sorrows of your changing face,” the aging and grief that drive other admirers away. The speaker never says he is that man. He doesn’t need to.

Where Love Goes

The final stanza lifts off from the hearth. Love, capitalized and personified, flees up the mountains and hides “his face amid a crowd of stars.” He is partly the god of love abandoning an old woman, and partly the rejected lover himself, withdrawing into distance and into poetry. The movement from fireplace to night sky matches the poem’s argument: the love she refused has not died, but it has gone somewhere she can no longer reach.

Form and Technique

The poem has 12 lines in three quatrains of iambic pentameter, rhymed ABBA CDDC EFFE. Enclosed rhyme of this kind opens the Italian sonnet, and with Ronsard’s sonnet behind it, the poem reads like a sonnet with its last two lines missing, a love poem that stops short, much as the love it describes did.

Yeats slows the verse down to match the old woman by the fire. The first stanza is one long sentence strung together with “and”: “And nodding,” “And slowly read, and dream.” The whole poem is in fact a single sentence, held open by semicolons, so it never pauses long enough for her to answer. Soft sounds do the rest: the alliterating “glad grace” and “false or true,” and the long vowels of “old,” “grey,” “slowly,” and “soul.”

Notable Lines

Three passages carry the poem from the fireside to the stars.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book

Lines 1 to 2

The opening sets the scene decades ahead and names the book she will be holding. From the first line, the poem is speaking to the future.

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face

Lines 7 to 8

The most quoted lines in the poem, and its claim to fame. Loving someone’s beauty is easy; loving their soul and their aging face is rare.

And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Lines 11 to 12

The ending turns a private regret into a cosmic image. Love does not die here; it simply moves out of reach.

Themes

Three ideas run through the poem.

True love and surface love. The poem separates love of beauty, which fades with its object, from love of the whole person, which does not.

Time and aging. The poem is written in the present but lived in the future. Old age is not only a threat here; it is the moment the truth becomes clear.

Regret and rejected love. Behind the gentleness is the pain of a man turned down, imagining the day the woman who refused him will understand what she lost.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers ask most often about “When You Are Old.”

What is “When You Are Old” by Yeats about?

It is about true love outlasting youth and beauty. The speaker asks a woman to imagine herself old, rereading his poem, and realizing that of all her admirers only one loved her soul and her changing face.

Who was “When You Are Old” written for?

It was written for Maud Gonne, the Irish nationalist and actress Yeats loved for most of his life. She turned down his first proposal in 1891, the year he wrote the poem, and several more after it.

What does “pilgrim soul” mean in the poem?

It means a restless, searching spirit that is always traveling toward something. Yeats is praising the woman’s inner life and ideals, not her looks, and hinting at Maud Gonne’s lifelong devotion to political causes.

Is “When You Are Old” based on Ronsard?

Yes. It is a free adaptation of Pierre de Ronsard’s 1578 sonnet “Quand vous serez bien vieille.” Yeats keeps the image of an old woman by the fire but drops Ronsard’s closing advice to love while she still can.

What is the rhyme scheme of “When You Are Old”?

The rhyme scheme is ABBA CDDC EFFE, three quatrains of enclosed rhyme in iambic pentameter, 12 lines in all.

Glossary

A few words and phrases are easy to pass over.

  • nodding (line 2): Dozing, with the head dropping forward in sleep.
  • glad grace (line 5): Moments of happiness and charm.
  • pilgrim soul (line 7): A restless, searching spirit, always traveling toward an ideal.
  • glowing bars (line 9): The metal bars of a fire grate, glowing with heat.
  • Love (line 10): Love personified as a god, like Cupid or Eros, who abandons her.

The poem has a life beyond the page.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s film Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), the young writer Michael recites lines from the poem to Kathleen Turner’s Peggy Sue during a night ride into the country, and “pilgrim soul” returns later in the film.

The Montreal cartoonist Julian Peters adapted the poem as a short comic drawn in the style of Japanese shōjo manga.

If this poem speaks to you, these make good companions.

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By , Editor · Last updated September 2026