From W.B. to Maud Gonne

This mural of Maud Gonne and poem by W.B. Yeats was completed in 2015 in celebration of 150 years since Yeats' birth.

Yeats wrote the poem in October 1891, during his uncertain relationship with Maud Gonne, an Anglo-Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress. He proposed to her many times seeing himself as the "one man" that truly loved her. Sadly for Yeats she always rejected his proposals :-(


When You Are Old

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 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.