When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray 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.

This poem is very serene, and it's filled with sweet memories. Persona, the grandmother, is now old and she recollecting her memories from the past. This poem had me thinking about what kind of things I would remember as memorable when I become a grandpa. I'm sure I'll remember TCIS as memorable.
This persona does not want to be any older, and she has fallen inside this hole of reminiscence, feeling sad and wanting to travel back in times when she was young.

We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!


When I saw this poem, and it immediately grabbed my attention because the title, We Wear The Mask, sounded attractive and wasn't tedious. Honestly, I do not fully understand this profound poem, but I think Paul Laurence, the author, is telling us about the unrevealed problems that's going around in the society that we live in. How people try to hide their pains and adversities by trying to handle it entirely by themselves or acting like nothing has ever happened to them. Those people may look fine on the outside with a smile and a mask, but there may be undivulged sufferings that are hidden inside. These days, the world is over picky of others’ mistakes and it pressures some people to put on the mask, and only show the fine and accepted side to other people.