The several roses of Mr. Yeats

Cummings' "rosetree, rosetree", which I posted last time, is not one of my favorite poems (even though Cummings is one of my favorite poets), and I only posted it in order to provide a transition between last week and this week.

The poems I'm discussing today, however, are some of my favorite poems, and Yeats, of course, is one of my favorite poets.

Yeats' second book, published 1893, was called "The Rose", and the first poem in it---a dedication in verse---carries the title "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time" (and is printed entirely in italics).

For Yeats, the rose is a multivalent metaphor.  The fourth, fifth, and sixth poems of the book are called, respectively, "The Rose of the World", "The Rose of Peace", and "The Rose of Battle", and "rose" quite obviously has a different new meaning in each of these poems.

And this is not even restricted to this one early book.  The seventh poem in "Michael Robartes and the Dancer", published 1921, for example, is called "The Rose Tree", and in that poem "rose" means something completely different (and definitely something very different from Cummings' "rosetree").

But I'm not posting any of the above.  I only brought all that up in the hope that you may look up those beautiful poems :)

I'm also not posting the most famous poem in "The Rose", which would be "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", but here is an exquisite recording of it in Yeats' own voice.

I'm posting this brutal poem from "The Rose" that Jim discussed at length the first summer that I got into his class at the Workshop:
______________________

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.