Old Age and Resilience in Yeats' "An Acre of Grass" Anonymous 12th Grade

William Butler Yeats’ poem “An Acre of Grass” is from his collection called “Last Poems” published posthumously in 1939. In this poem, we find Yeats as a withering septuagenarian bedeviled by the inevitable decay of his body and the desolation that old age brings on its way. This preoccupation with old age is found in his other poems like “The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner”, “When You Are Old” and above all “Sailing to Byzantium” where he writes, “An aged man is but a paltry thing”. On one hand, “An Acre of Grass” graphically depicts the despondency that the poet feels at the loss of his zest and potency with the onset of old age; but on the other, it reflects the poet’s yearning for rejuvenation and reinvigorated passion; in fact, Yeats reportedly underwent an operation called the Steinach operation for "fresh lease of life" prior to writing this poem.

The opening line of the poem, “Picture and book remain” evokes a blissful image of repose and serenity with ‘picture and book’ as conventional companions of an old man. The poet owns ‘’an acre of green grass’’, that he has delimited for “air and exercise”. The word ‘acre’ becomes significant as it implies the inexorable restriction the poet faces due physical debility. ‘Green...