Lamentation of the Old Pensioner

W B Yeats

 Objectives

To be familiar with the old age characters as contrasting from the young life

To be able to distinguish the feelings from reality

To be able to distinguish life from art

Background theme.

The poem lamentation of the old pensioner is a poem about reminiscence or recollection on the
young times of an old person, or old pensioner to be understood as being a  retired person from
life.  The poem was written by William Butler Yeats, a well known playwright and poet of his
time particularly known for his symbolism.

The poem is an expression of indignation and feeling of renunciation upon the role of time
in every human’s life. The feeling as such thus presents a very gloomy picture of old age
personality because the speaker shows that every one of us is sure to be reduced to nothing
counting days for the death to arrive any moment and lonely life having no one to love and
respect. Merely, comparing the young time roles and energy with the old age loss of everything
is what makes one severely suffer with the feeling of tragedy in hand.

Paraphrasing the poem

The old man remembers, he is merely living his days just in the manner a person shelters
from the rain under a broken tree. That means his survival is not strong and protected. But he
remembers he used to be on the front line for everything whether that used to be a matter of love
or politics.
Now that he is old he finds that the boys, whom he feels as being the conspirators, are making
weapons that kill the old people. The boys look like rascal (wicked individuals)   to him and he
says they raise their weapon to incite him and to terrorize him. All these are his experiences of
the time he has been changed into old. The time is the factor that has really changed him.
In the third stanza, the speaker complains that no woman is ready to look at him because he
resembles with a broken tree. However, he can’t resist the memory of the beautiful women who
used to love him and whom he loved, because he has been a frontier and adventurer young man
in every sector of his life. But now nothing of the past is left with him and all his loss and feeling
of nothing is the result of time which is often experienced in the form villain for all.
Thus, finally he expresses fierce anger upon time and spits upon the face of time whose absence
otherwise would never change him from young and energetic person to old age broken tree.

Interpretation

The poem can be interpreted to be an example of art which allows one to understand life as being
controlled by physical reality. The point that life is controlled by physical reality would mean
that everything in the form of matter and substance has to pass through changes from god to bad
or bad to good due to change that happens in the property of material existence.  Human’s life is
also a combination of physical or biological property and non-substantial entity known as soul.
It is vividly inferable in the poem that human beings have to change from young to old age and it
is unavoidable too, because time is the only universal force that forces our existence to follow
change from attractive and energetic life to unattractive and unenergetic life, from healthy and
prosperous life to unhealthy and poor life, lovely and sociable life to deserted and lonely life and
so.  The process applies to each living being due to nature and natural law of evolution and
decline and death. Owing to this material reality and reality about force of time upon our
existence, it is true that each aging person develops the feeling of loss and tragedy till the end. In
the poem, the old person expresses grief upon his old circumstances that are marked to be
unbearable because he happens to recall that his young life had been too adventurous and
promising. But now, he finds a fierce contrast between his present state of life and his past when
his position in every sector, may that be love, or politics or any other profession, used to be on
top of everyone in his company. The old age makes him see that the youth of his time are not
cooperative, they are not respectful to old people, instead, they appear to be plotting against his
existence and creating terror for him. He criticizes the youth for their behavior toward the old
people. Finally he feels shocked when he finds that he is like a broken tree in his physical
appearance and has lost everything including his beloved women or partners. The speaker
accuses time for being the only enemy of his fellow creatures and his enemy as he believes that
nothing else except time has dragged him to the state of loneliness and loss.
Hence, the message is that time is the controlling factor and in front of its law no human or
living being can live in despotic manner because life is controlled by physical elements and time
controls all physical entities without fail.

Critical Appreciation
The poem is affine piece of art that interprets life and the world in a subtle manner to show how life
is moduled and guided and so, how feelings are evoked in the living creatures just as in the poem who
happens to interpret artistically how comparable his life is with the broken tree and loss of quality.
The poem is small in size; however, it presents a philosophical understanding of life. Besides, its quality
is traceable in its being symbolic and use of metaphors to show how life is no better than broken tree
which means life less tree depending on the environmental process to be decayed soon.
The human existence is not superior to the substantial existence as it gets changed, and controlled by
the time factor as a changing force upon. This kind of true understanding is expressed in the poem in a
very artistic manner embodying imagistic quality to be received in pictorial form by the readers.
The poem has used symbolic strategy as well and it serves the purpose of comparing the lived
experiences with the properties yielded in nature.
The most remarkable technique though is of struggle shown between time as driving force and life as
dependent entity under time. This is shown in the relation of protagonist and antagonist, known victor
and victim. The time controlling life conditioning humans to it is portrayed as being victor whereas,
human being starting with pleasurable and promising life and declining in old age conditions just as
setting day is pictured in the form of victim. It is in this positional demarcation that the conflict drives
poem to end in tragic tone in which the poet defies the time but not in physical war, only in his spirit and
so expresses his anger by spitting upon the face of time just as is done on the face of an enemy.
The time and ages as well as physical existence are all compared by means of use of personification and
also use of expressions that appeal harsh to the heart.
Conclusion

The poem in conclusion is to be seen as being an embodiment of old age experiences expressed in
subjective manner the old man’s of personal sentiments. The conclusion is; time matters a lot for ever
living being because it can’t be stopped nor can its impact upon the life span of us all. Thus, we are left
with rage, repugnance and hatred upon our own position and existence which is not ours in any respect,

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