When You Are Old

The poem 'When you are old' highlights how a poet tries to express his love and concern in the form of a poem, and even though this collection of poems is presented to her very early, she should try to catch hold of it only when she is old and then read the same and think about her past

The few conditions the poet imposes are:

The poems must be read when she is old, her hair gone gray and she should be full of sleep, which means that she should be able to prevent herself from going into deep heavenly sleep(death).  She has to take that book, read it very slowly as she is old and has to often recollect past events.  She will immediately think about the way she had many admirers and how all of them followed her like shadow.

There were many men who were attracted towards her grace and physical appearance, and she could not distinguish between the true ones and the flatterers.  But far away from all of those was a man who loved her soul and not her external appearance and he equates it to a very divine concept and that is why he mentions the word 'pilgrim'. Added to all this, he was in love with 'the changing phases of her face' as and when she was growing old and her age appeared to be a burden to her.

The old woman sits near the hearth and murmurs to herself in a sad tone thinking about the past and she equates it to a sense of impossibility as that love has reached such a place from which it may not return and on the other hand it might be a bit difficult for her to reach that place too.  In the last couple of lines, love is personified for actual, as well as philosophical reasons.