A Man Young and Old: 7. the Friends of His Youth
A Man Young and Old: 7. the Friends of His Youth - context Summary
Published in the Tower
Published in The Tower (1928), this short lyric finds an older speaker remembering youthful friends who return as moonlit visions. Madge appears as a stone she thinks is a child; Peter boasts and perches like a peacock. The speaker’s laughter mixes tenderness, irony, and grief: memory transforms their past selves into comic or tragic figures, and those transformations reveal the poem’s meditation on aging, changed identities, and lingering affection.
Read Complete AnalysesLaughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit, For that old Madge comes down the lane, A stone upon her breast, And a cloak wrapped about the stone, And she can get no rest With singing hush and hush-a-bye; She that has been wild And barren as a breaking wave Thinks that the stone's a child. And Peter that had great affairs And was a pushing man Shrieks, 'I am King of the Peacocks,' And perches on a stone; And then I laugh till tears run down And the heart thumps at my side, Remembering that her shriek was love And that he shrieks from pride.
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