Yeats: When You Are Old and Gray

Lovely imagery. Yeats wrote this for Maud Gonne, who never really returned his romantic love but was certainly his muse in many ways.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• yeats
• when
• old
• gray
• nodding
• fire
• sleep
• stars
• mountains
• love

[NonInflatable]

I wrote this lovely poem down in pencil and gave it to my wife before our wedding.

And here we are, 32 years later, still married, and she still has the scrap of paper.

Whoever you are, you delivered the poem beautifully, and you made that last magic line sail through the sky! Well done.

[nannygoatj]

@NonInflatable What a testament to lasting love! Thank you for letting me know. And thank you for the kind comment.

[NonInflatable]

Long marriages are a testment to sheer endurance, more than anything else, Nannygoatj,as you probably know!

But you're very welcome. Your delivery of this lovely poem was beautiful.

And what a sweet romantic you are.

[windbronze]

BRAVO !

I love poetry and I love this poem more than any other. I feel this is truly the most moving interpretation I've ever seen/heard of "When you are old". I don't just praise without really good cause, I have to feel it deeply ! Both her facial expressions AND the emotions in her reading voice capture what I believe Yeats intended. This is the art of poetry and while her recital may look easy, if she didn't feel it deep down inside, it would be obvious. A painting with words !!

[silvermaneman]

One of the finest readings of this poem I have ever heard. Thank you!

[daddio7777777]

Thank you , you read it well, without affectation and with feeling.

The poem is a very free adaptation of the French  poem : ''Sonnet à Hélène' ' by Pierre de Ronsard. Both tell of unrequited love. Unrequited love is a pound of flesh carved out of one's breast but this flesh wrenched out of one's breast has produced some of the world's greatest poetry. Maud Gonne was a tragic page in Yeats' life. Read '' The Circus animals' desertion'' carefully. There is a clue there everyone has missed.

[waywardtycoon]

@nordicsky I am a little surprised that the only commentary here is so cloyingly doting, and that this particularly amateurish rendering escapes sensible criticism. The reading of this great poem comes naturally for those who can grasp its tragic pathos, where alliterative and rhythmic elements emerge spontaneously. This reader doesn’t seem to get it ... rather she comes across as some teen-aged prissy high school student more fascinated with the sound of her own voice than anything else.

[nordicsky]

Wow... that was the most amazing read. This is the first W. B. Yates poem I have heard read aloud and it was a real treat. Your reading was beautiful, eloquent, and done with such feeling that your love of poetry shone through it.

Thanks for posting this

Life is good

Kind regards, Peter

[violetsky0036]

Regarding Loreena McKennitt, since you mentioned you had some cd's from the 90's, I thought you would have to get Nights from the Alhambra. I was mistaken when I said She Moved Thru the Fair was Yeats, but that song is on this cd which also has dvd. It was my first of hers and I was instantly hooked. Just thought you might want to check it out. Thanks for your response to my earliler post.

[imitator777]

i love when beautiful women read poetry