1. Broken Dreams
W.B. Yeats
Written 1915.
Published in
‘The Wild Swans at
Coole’ (1919)

2. There is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.
For your sole sake - that all heart's ache have known,
And given to others all heart's ache,
From meagre girlhood's putting on
Burdensome beauty - for your sole sake 10
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.

3. Your beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, "Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.‘
Vague memories, nothing but memories, 20
But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.
The certainty that I shall see that lady
Leaning or standing or walking
In the first loveliness of womanhood,
And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
Has set me muttering like a fool.
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories

4. You are more beautiful than any one,
And yet your body had a flaw:
Your small hands were not beautiful,
And I am afraid that you will run 30
And paddle to the wrist
In that mysterious, always brimming lake
Where those What have obeyed the holy law
paddle and are perfect. Leave unchanged
The hands that I have kissed,
For old sake's sake.
The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air: 40
Vague memories, nothing but memories

5. When You Are Old (1893)
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 among a crowd of stars.

6. Yeats’s Muse
The poem is very clearly about Maud Gonne and his
changing relationship with her. She was 49, Yeats 50,
when this was written.
The other poems you’ve studied or will study that link
directly to Maud are:
Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven;
The Wild Swans at Coole;
Broken Dreams;
When you Are Old;
Leda and the Swan;
Among Schoolchildren.
You’ll need to be confident you can connect these poems,
unseen, in the exam, not only to Maud, but to the wider
themes and ideas Yeats is attempting to present.
Out of interest, what do you think they are?

7. Is this poem a lament? A celebration? Or a reaffirmation?
In 1903 Maud Gonne married John MacBride ending Yeats’s hopes of marrying her.
his poetry also changed and this poem reflects the newer realism as opposed to
the ‘old high way of love’ (from ‘Adam’s Curse’ (1903)) from before.
How does this support Yeats belief in the importance of ‘self-
quarrelling that results in poetry.?’
WB Yeats ‘Anima Hominis’ (1918)
‘The elegaic feeling is strong here, but also we sense the
poet briefly doubting his own faith in an afterlife.’
Greening (2005)
Q. Write a short paragraph explaining how each of these quotes relate or help
contextualise your understanding of the poem ‘Broken Dreams’.