Ransom, Day Two, and Yeats' "When You Are Old"

  When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats : The Poetry Foundation

  

Looking back at visitor comments on my last post about “Blue Girls,” it appears there’ll be no Fan Club for John Crowe Ransom forming here. Still, AH and I actually like the poem, and the criticism from others is not vitriolic, as I thought it might be. Here again is the poem:

Blue Girls

Twirling your blue skirts, traveling the sward

Under the towers of your seminary,

Go listen to your teachers old and contrary

Without believing a word.

Tie the white fillets then about your hair

And think no more of what will come to pass

Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass

And chattering on the air.

Practise your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;

And I will cry with my loud lips and publish

Beauty which all our powers shall never establish,

It is so frail.

For I could tell you a story which is true;

I know a lady with a terrible tongue,

Blear eyes fallen from blue,

All her perfections tarnished—yet it is not long

Since she was lovelier than any of you.

John Crowe Ransom  http://www.poemtree.com/poems/BlueGirls.htm

PA, Stickup, and Jean, maybe it’s not just a predictable protest about aging and the passing of youthful beauty, but also a warning:  have something in your life beyond physical beauty, which will “fail," even in the most charitable of situations. That’s where the girls might have done well to believe and not just courteously, obediently listen to “old and contrary” teachers, who might get them started on ways to fill the void left by feminine beauty and vitality.

What if a teacher convinced a teen to pursue art or art history and not “just” a modeling career for artists?  I feel uncomfortable in suggesting the poem is, in a peculiar way, about career counseling, yet why else advocate that kids believe their teachers? 

The twist might be that believing in science or literature or history or general intellectual curiosity might become some kind of adequate or even wonderful replacement for beauty, or self-esteem based entirely on a physical package. Given such pursuits, a girl, or anyone, can be more than a bluebird “chattering on the air.” 

It’s surely easy to rip on teachers, who have so many words and offer them much too freely. Even teachers rip on teachers, their old ones and their current colleagues. But, listen here, Blue Girls (and Hunk-Boys), when the time comes, what will you do to fill the void where your beauty, vitality and identity once were?  “Go to Trade School” sounds like a weird answer, but it’s actually just a variation on the old adage, “Follow your bliss.” First, find your bliss, then follow it. What are your alternatives?

It’s ironic that a poem on the cusp of sexism is also a potential antidote to sexism. I hear Ransom saying, “Don’t be an Air Head.”  However sad it is that the exquisite bloom of youth must fade—and it is sad; let's not underestimate it—there’s another urgent cry on the poet's “loud lips” too; it says, WAKE UP. Go down to the Meaningful Store and fill ‘er up with something that lasts.

For comparison, here’s Yeats on a similar subject. It’s early Yeats, which is academy-speak for sentimental, not-yet-adequate Yeats. I guess that’s why so many people include “When You Are Old” on their list of favorites. Where does any poem get its power? Now there’s a question to keep you up late. 

 
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats : The Poetry Foundation