When you are old and grey and full of sleep,When You Are Old, by William Butler Yeats. Recited by Samantha Kyrkostas and Dr. Charles A. "Dockie" Schlegel.
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.
Kyrkostas said that her grandfathers told her: Never stop finding beauty in art, or music, or poetry, because that is what makes us the special creature of God. To Dockie, it was about mortality. After she read it, he paused, then recollected Shakespeare saying that poetry soothed the savage beast. Theirs is a lovely story and journey, with lovely pithy things, like her moving from a village in the Ukraine to Ukrainian Village in Chicago.
This is one of my favorite poems, as Yeats had a way of making simple words sound profoundly beautiful.
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