“when you are old” by william butler yeats 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, 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 and paced upon the mountains overhead and hid his face amid a crowd of stars. what does the speaker ask of the person he is addressing in “when you are old”? to remember that she was loved for who she really is to think about when she was young and beautiful to write and tell him how she is to visit him some day