Men improve with the Years
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryAn ageing poet gazes at a young woman's beauty like a statue.
The speaker calls himself "worn out with dreams", a weather-worn marble triton standing among streams. All day he looks at a lady's beauty as if it were a picture in a book, content to admire, to be wise, since "men improve with the years". Then the calm breaks: "And yet and yet", he asks whether this is dream or truth, and wishes they had met when he had his "burning youth". The poem closes where it began, with the old statue among the streams, now growing old "among dreams".
Lines to remember
I am worn out with dreams;
For men improve with the years;
When I had my burning youth;
Line by line
Lines 1 to 3The marble triton
He compares himself to "A weather-worn, marble triton", a statue of a sea god in a fountain. Like the statue, he is fixed, worn by weather and surrounded by moving water, but no longer moving himself.
Lines 4 to 11Content to look
He looks on "this lady's beauty" as if at "A pictured beauty" in a book, pleased to satisfy eye and ear and "Delighted to be but wise". The line "For men improve with the years" sounds reasonable, but the title warns us it is also ironic.
Lines 12 to 18And yet
The stammered "And yet and yet" breaks the calm. He wishes they had met "When I had my burning youth", and the poem returns to its opening image, changed from "worn out with dreams" to "I grow old among dreams".
Themes
Age and desire
The poem sets the wisdom of age against the "burning youth" he has lost. He tries to be content with looking, as an old man should, but "And yet and yet" admits that desire has not died. The title's claim that "men improve with the years" is only half believed.
Art and life
He treats the lady's beauty as "A pictured beauty" in a book, and pictures himself as a marble statue. Turning life into art keeps him safe but also makes him lifeless. The question "Is this my dream, or the truth?" shows him unsure which world he is living in.
Context
The poem was collected in The Wild Swans at Coole (Cuala Press, 1917). "This lady" is not named; the poem is usually read in connection with Iseult Gonne, Maud Gonne's daughter, whom Yeats had known since her childhood and to whom he proposed in 1917, only to be refused. Yeats was then in his fifties.
Form
Eighteen short lines of uneven length, rhymed loosely in pairs ("dreams" and "streams", "look" and "book", "yet" and "met"). The poem ends almost as it began, repeating the triton lines, so the speaker is left standing exactly where he started.