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When You Are Young

...dedicated to W.B. Yeats, in response to his poem 'When You Are Old' When you are young sweet innocence abounds, your step is gentle, all your dreams are free of grim disquietude, such joy you see as gaily you discharge your daily rounds. Your heart is light, bereft of grave concern that troubles him whose purity is lost, who argues and contends at any cost, who complicates and twists at every turn. Simplicity must be your cornerstone, strengthen your heart against all sorts of strife that undermine a childlike view of life, strive and prevail, lest innocence be gone!

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Mark Peterson

Date: 2/20/2016 8:44:00 AM

How rare to encounter one in whom there is no guile. So prepare and banish all vexations. Become a child again, if you've not forgotten how. There is great wisdom in this poem.

Keith Bickerstaffe
Date: 2/20/2016 9:24:00 AM

Yeats' original... 863. 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, 5 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 10 And paced upon the mountains overhead, And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.