Rachel and Poetry

One day back when Rachel was helping me get
better, and we were out walking on a cold day,
I quoted her the last stanza of this poem
by Yeats:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I had told Rachel the story of how Yeats loved
Maude Gonne and wrote her this poem,
and Rachel did not find the situation romantic.
She found it a cruelly devastating poem.
And of course I realized she was right. I had
been very influenced by my sophomore high
school English teacher - God bless you, Mrs.
Catran - who said to us, "How could any
woman reject someone who could write such
beautiful poetry." But Rachel saw it for
what it was a revenge fantasy of the rejected.

Still, Rachel, I think you could have a little
pity for those of us who love with no hope of
return. Accepting reality, we still want to think
there is something inside our beloved which
will always believe us to be somehow uniquely
special, if not the one.

The alternative is nothing less than unbearable.