Beautiful Old Men: the Flight of Life

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W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water” was written in 1904. Many of the poems in the collection of poems titled In The Seven Woods were rewritten after the huge storm of 1903 which took Ireland by surprise. A note from Yeats himself describes the viciousness of the storm “blew down so many trees, & troubled the wild creatures, & changed the look of things.” This destructive storm served as the inspiration for most poems in The Seven Woods and the emphasis is clearly seen in “The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water”. The central meaning of the poem is that beauty and youth is transient and fleeting. The main message of the poem is made clear in line two “Everything alters.” In this poem everything is altered through water. The similes found in lines four and five show that the water is not still. Nonetheless the men stand around this pool of water admiring their reflection. The reflection they see is the quality of their youth. Their age makes their reflections to have earthly imagery. The men are as old as the dirt and the trees and nature. To admire one’s reflection it can be assumed that the image must be accurate to the views present opinions of themselves. The title shows that the men are content with their distorted representation by the water. Water also can be interpreted as the passing of time in lines eight through nine: “drifts away|like the waters” (Lines 8 and 9). The drift gives water another incessant fluid characteristic. The contentment and passivity of how the men accept their reflections demonstrates their acceptance of fate. The water is permanent, while for the men, “one by one we drop” (line 3). These two ideas create a powerful image of the men dropping one by one into the pool, further distorting the image. Everyone ages together and new people take their spots around the pool. This conveyer belt
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