When You Are Old Flashcards
1
Q
Main speaker
A
Someone (Yeats) talking to his former lover
2
Q
Themes
A
Love, memory, aging, youth, regret
3
Q
Imagery
A
4
Q
Main Language features
A
Repetition, descriptive language,
5
Q
Tone
A
Starts of romantic and positive but then becomes regretful and melancholy by the end
6
Q
Structure
A
3 4 line stanzas , iambic pentameter, steady rhyme scheme.
7
Q
Context
A
Yeats born in Dublin
Published in 1892. Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923
Autobiographical poem
– When You Are Old was written for the Irish revolutionary and actress Maud Gonne who rejected Yeats’ marriage proposals and married another man
The poem is based on a French poem Quand vous serez bien vielle…’ by the French poet Ronsard
8
Q
Could be compared with
A
Funeral blues
