When you are old
for soprano, flute, violin, cello, & piano
words by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
While Yeats allegedly wrote this now-classic poem to warn a lover against jilting him, this musical interpretation takes the lover’s point of view and focuses on the reminiscent quality of the situation described in the text. In other words, the poem’s addressee now is old and grey and reflecting on loves gone by, but (contrary to what Yeats may have intended) calmly and without regret.