The New Faces
The New Faces - meaning Summary
Presence Beyond Physical Absence
Yeats reflects on memory, loss and persistence of presence after death. Addressing a loved one who has aged or died, the speaker insists that new occupants and passing time cannot erase the past. Physical changes or replacements are insignificant because the dead’s influence endures: their shadows continue to inhabit familiar places. The poem contrasts transient living activity with a lasting, almost spectral continuity of attachment and memory.
Read Complete AnalysesIf you, that have grown old, were the first dead, Neither catalpa tree nor scented lime Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of Time. Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
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