The Friends of his Youth

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1928from The Tower20 lines

The Friends of His Youth

Laughter not time destroyed my voiceAnd put that crack in it,And when the moon’s pot-belliedI get a laughing fit,For that old Madge comes down the laneA stone upon her breast,And a cloak wrapped about the stone,And she can get no restWith singing hush and hush-a-bye;She that has been wildAnd barren as a breaking waveThinks that the stone’s a child.And Peter that had great affairsAnd was a pushing manShrieks, “I am King of the Peacocks,”And perches on a stone;And then I laugh till tears run downAnd the heart thumps at my side,Remembering that her shriek was loveAnd that he shrieks from pride.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

An old man laughs and weeps at two friends gone mad with age.

The seventh poem of "A Man Young and Old". Laughter, not time, has cracked the old man's voice, and at the full moon he gets a laughing fit. Old Madge comes down the lane nursing a stone wrapped in a cloak and singing it to sleep: once "wild / And barren", she now thinks the stone's a child. Peter, once a busy, pushing man of "great affairs", perches on a stone and shrieks that he is "King of the Peacocks". The old man laughs till he cries, remembering that her shriek was love and his is pride.

Lines to remember

Laughter not time destroyed my voice

Thinks that the stone's a child.

And that he shrieks from pride.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4A cracked voice
"Laughter not time destroyed my voice": the joke is on himself. When "the moon's pot-bellied", swollen to full, he gets "a laughing fit". The moon, which ruled the young man's love in "First Love", now presides over old age and madness.
Lines 5 to 12Madge and the stone
Old Madge comes down the lane with "A stone upon her breast", wrapped in a cloak, and can get no rest for singing "hush and hush-a-bye". She has been "wild / And barren as a breaking wave", and now in old age "Thinks that the stone's a child". The image is both comic and heartbreaking.
Lines 13 to 16King of the Peacocks
Peter "had great affairs / And was a pushing man", ambitious and self-important. Now he "Shrieks, 'I am King of the Peacocks'" and perches on a stone. The peacock, a bird of vanity, suits a man whose pride has outlived his power.
Lines 17 to 20Love and pride
The old man laughs "till tears run down", laughter and grief mixed together. The last lines draw the difference: Madge's cry was love, the longing for a child she never had; Peter's shriek is pride. Both are mad, but the poem sorts their madness by what it comes from.

Themes

Madness of age

Madge nursing a stone and Peter perched like a peacock are pictures of the mind in old age, holding on to what life denied or took away. Madge, "barren as a breaking wave", finally has her child; Peter, who "had great affairs", finally has his kingdom. Their delusions are what their deepest wishes look like at the end.

Laughter and grief

The speaker laughs until "tears run down" and his heart "thumps". It is the laughter of someone who sees too clearly: at the absurd sight of his old friends, and at himself, since laughter has already cracked his voice. The poem refuses to choose between comedy and pity, and holds both.

Context

"The Friends of his Youth" is the seventh poem in "A Man Young and Old", first collected in The Tower (Macmillan, 1928). Madge and Peter return in the poems that follow: Peter in "Summer and Spring", Madge in "The Secrets of the Old". The stone and the peacock's cry come back in "His Wildness", where the old man imagines taking up both kinds of madness himself.

Form

Twenty lines in one block, in ballad metre: four-beat lines alternate with three-beat lines, and the short lines rhyme in pairs ("it" and "fit", "breast" and "rest", "wild" and "child"). The plain, sing-song movement matches the lullaby Madge sings and makes the madness sound matter-of-fact.

The Friends of his Youth