The Warning is a Sandwich

“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats is a warning in 10 syllables and 3 stanzas. The male speaker of the poem (let’s call him William) warns the woman (let’s call her Lesbia, actually let’s call her Maud) that she will regret denying his love when she is old. Although the poem takes place at the end of Maud’s life, it seems clear that William is warning Maud when she is still young. The warning is a sandwich. The bread, the first and third stanzas, bookend the second stanza and discuss what will happen in the future if Maud chooses to deny William’s love. The meat, the second stanza, discusses William’s love and what is happening in present time. The first and last stanzas also depict what William believes Maud will be doing and thinking in the future, while the second stanza narrates how William himself feels about Maud.

The poem begins with Maud being “old and grey” and “full of sleep” and “ nodding by the fire” (line 1). These lines demonstrate her age and how close she is to death because old people sleep a lot. Lines 1 and 2 have a halcyon mood to them, but the tone starts to change with the word “once” in line 4. “Once” changes the tone because it is the first evidence that this poem is not going to be about pure, unwavering love.

The second stanza does have some elements of that pure, unwavering love idea. With the passing of each line in the second stanza, William further separates himself from other suitors through his real love for Maud. In the first line of the second stanza we learn that Maud was popular, attractive, and well loved by many through the phrase “many loved her moments of glad grace” (line 5). The word “moments” in this line reminds us of the contrast between the vacillating nature of the way most suitors only love the “glad grace” of Maud and the way William loves Maud. “Moments” also reminds us of the temporal nature of her beauty and of the poem. In line 6, William clearly separates himself as one of the people who “[truly]” loves Maude. In lines 7 and 8, William further separates himself as the “one man” who loves the real Maud, her “pilgrim soul,” and the “only man” who will love her after her “changing face” has changed so much that her “glad grace” and “beauty” are gone (line 5-8).

At stanza three, William returns to the future, in the same timeframe as in the first stanza. The first line of the third stanza is used to transport us back into the old woman’s room, now detailed with “the glowing bars” of a fire (line 9). Lines 10-12 reveal that “Love” will leave Maud, without William. The capitalized “Love” dually represents William and all love, in general. The last two lines of poem have two meanings as well. The “mountains” and the area “amid a crowd of stars” could represent an unreachable destination that Maud, without William, could not reach, and/or a desirable place that William will be end up even without Maud.

With the understanding of William’s points about his love at present time in stanza two, and about Maud’s sad future time in stanza one and three, the overall warning tone of this poem becomes clear.

This poem is good, but was William’s warning successful?
Turns out the poem directly parallels William Butler Yeats’s "unrequited" love for Maud Gonne. The speaker, William, could actually be William Butler Yeats and the woman, Maud, could actually be Maud Gonne! If the poem is trying to get Maud to be with him, it fails. Gonne never returned Yeats’s love and Yeats ended up marrying another woman, Georgie Hyde-Lees. Hyde-Lees must be the “mountains” and “stars” that William, the speaker, moves onto when Maud, the woman, chooses not to be with him (Lives of the Poets 1217). But luckily for us, Yeats tried to warn Gonne, and therefore we still have the poem, “When You Are Old.” (676)