Unit One
Lesson Three
The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner W. B. Yeats
SUMMARY
W.
B. Yeats, the greatest English poet of 20th century, presents the
reminiscences of his eventful young age and contrasts them with his present
pathetic old life in the poem, “The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner.”
The
title suggests that the poet is a Pensioner. It means he must be very old and
is living a retired life. He says whenever he is caught in rain he takes
shelter under a broken tree. The broken tree cannot protect him from the rain.
Here, one must note the point that in England it rains during winter. It means
he is deprived of a reliable shelter, when he needs it most. But it was not
always the case with him. When he was young, he used to sit nearest to the
fire, which warmed and comforted him. You can’t light fire in rain outside. It
means he had reliable place to live in when he was young. Not only that, the
cosy parlour of the poet always used to be full with the livelier company of
his friends who talked about love and politics. But today, he misses them as
“Time” has taken away all his friends leaving him old and isolated.
He
sees some mischievous boys making weapons for some conspiracy. These ‘rascals’
are sure to create chaos in the society through some barbarous activities. But
the poet is not concerned about the possible anarchy in the society. He is sad
as the time has transfigured him.
The
poet laments that the time has made him ugly like a broken tree and therefore,
no woman shows interest in him. However, the poet consoles himself that “the
beauties that he loved” are still fresh in his memory. He holds the “Time” a
culprit, who has taken away his shelter, friends, youth, energy, and charm and
wants to spit on its face in disgust for his metamorphosis.
Significance
of the Title: The
title of the poem, “The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner”, consists three
content words, two nouns (“lamentation” and “Pensioner”), and an adjective,
“old” that qualifies the second noun.
“Lamentation”
means mourning or wailing over the loss of some precious things, a privilege
position or an advantage. The second noun used by the poet is “pensioner”. The
poet could have used ‘man’ instead. But he didn’t. It is remarkable. A
pensioner is a senior citizen, who is provided with some (monetary) benifits
for the services s/he has provided in her/his youth. It helps him/her to live
in old age.
The
poet has become old as the ‘Time’ has cast its spell (effect) and transfigured
him into an ugly old man. It has taken away all his physical charms, energy, and
friends. Therefore, he is lamenting. However, at the same time, he boasts that
Time was not able to take away the memories of his heroic deeds done during the
Irish cultural revolutions and Irish republican movements of early 1920s. It
gives him heroic feeling and helps, like pension, to live in old age.
Analysis
The
poem is based on a conversation that Yeats had with an elderly poet. He wrote
in a letter that the poem was: little more than a translation into verse of the
very words of an old Wicklow peasant.”
Wicklow,
by the way, is a green, rural county south of Dublin. This precise technique of
observation of peasants is what Yeats later recommended to J.M. Sybge upon
meeting him in Paris, and which led to successful works like The
Playboy of the Western World.
The
elderly peasant’s lamentation is that time has transformed him into someone
that is no longer important or viable. This is in contrast to Yeats’s other,
more wistful and gentle portrayal of age in the rest of the collection. The
pikes to which the “old pensioner” refers are the weapons traditionally used in
nationalist uprisings against the British, which the man is too old for, so
regards as futile.
The
poem complicates Yeats’s earlier poems, many of which exhort the Irish to
contemplate eternal questions like Time rather than take up their pikes, so to
speak, for a passing political issue. This old man, who is forced away from
politics and love, shows the downside of such contemplative non-participation
in life. Of course, he is still tormented by the passions of his youth for
women and conservation, and so his mediation aren’t exactly what
Yeats has in mind in poems like “Who Goes with Fergus?” and “The Man Who
Dreamed of Faeryland.”
