Youth and Age

Youth and Age - meaning Summary

From Outrage to Acceptance

The speaker contrasts youthful anger with an older, resigned response to the world. When young he was oppressed and raged; in later life the same world soothes him with flattering words as he departs. The brief poem registers a shift from moral indignation to weary acceptance, meditating on aging, diminished resistance, and how time changes both our stance and the world’s treatment of us. It reflects Yeats’s personal sense of passage.