Melancholetta

Men improve with the years

Recently impassioned by The Collected Work of Yeats, I present some short poems that stood out in my mind:

Men improve with the years

I AM worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in a book
A pictured beauty,
pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet, and yet,
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth!
But I grow old among dreams,
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams.

-- William Butler Yeats


This poem is one in a collection called "The Wild Swans at Coole". I sat up and reread this poem, not because of the sense of profundity its title evoked, but because of the intense reverie and consciousness of its opening line, "I am worn out with dreams" that I experienced. There is something more immense in the statement, which quickly dispels any hopes of optimism that the title might have promised, that transcends the fatigability of the human mind. And for a second the protagonist is lost and he does not know where -- in his dreams or in the truth. "Men improve with years" fails to reassure against the tenebrous "Is this my dream, or the truth?" and the protagonist's pining for his youth. The constancy in imagery -- "weather-worn, marble triton among the streams", "a pictured beauty (in a book)" are all delectable visions of the chimaera -- reiterates that Yeats is a master craftsman of verse. The repetition of the first three lines in the end ring in the inexorable. Yeats accomplishes the intended irony with ease: "Men improve with the years" starkly contrasts with its title.

posted by Dileepan @ 3:27 PM