Do you think the speaker s beloved is old at the time of writing the poem Why do you think so In the poem When You Are Old William Butler Yeats - talks about love and growing old The speaker speaks to someone he loves deeply The poem makes us think about what happens when we get older The speaker s beloved is not old at the time of writing the poem Yeats imagines the beloved becoming old in the future He writes When you are old and grey and full of sleep These words suggest that the speaker is thinking about a time when the person will be much older The beloved is young at the moment but Yeats is imagining her in her later years He asks her to take down the book when she is old and to read it slowly remembering her youth The speaker also