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2.2.18.2: When You Are Old

  • Page ID
    83078
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    When You Are Old

    When You Are Old License: Public Domain W.B. Yeats

    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 look

    Your 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 bars

    Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

    And paced upon the mountains overhead

    And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


    This page titled 2.2.18.2: When You Are Old is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Anita Turlington, Matthew Horton, Karen Dodson, Laura Getty, Kyounghye Kwon, Georgia, & Laura Ng (GALILEO Open Learning Materials) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.