Poems to Carry in the Blood

Community project with Tara Penry

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

I love a community project, the chance to join with other writers in creating greater than the sum of our parts, and

Tara Penry

‘s come up with a good one, this, an invitation to share a poem we carry in our blood. Mine is When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats. I think it was one of the first poems I learnt by heart, and I loved it from the moment I heard it. It was published in 1893 in The Rose. Here’s a link to it featured on The Poetry Foundation website.

It’s thought Yeats wrote it to Maud Gonne, a woman with whom he was infatuated for much of his life. Composed in his late twenties, it was published in The Rose in 1893 when he was twenty-eight.

I hope my reading does it justice, and you love it as much as I do.

When You Are Old

by W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey 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.

W.B Yeats

The Collected Works of Yeats can be bought at all good bookstores.