What do the young man and young woman converse in the poem 'For Anne Gregory ?
Answers
About the Poet
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish nationalist. He was educated in London and Dublin, and was interested in folklore and mythology. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
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Introduction to the lesson
W.B. Yeats has tried to touch a very important topic through his poem. He says that it is almost impossible to find a person in your life who loves you truly. By saying truly, he means the one who loves you for your qualities and not your looks. He says that only God loves us for what we are from inside.
Summary of the poem
The poem is basically a conversation between the poet, Yeats and a young girl named Anne Gregory. The poet tells her that if she finds a young boy who becomes sad because of her rejection, it doesn’t mean that he was a true lover. He could have been in love with her because of her beautiful yellow hair. This means that the boy might be in love with her because of her attractive looks. He says that a true lover will be the one who will love her for her inner qualities and not her looks. To this, Anne says that she will change her looks by dying her hair into some other colour. She will become less attractive and then, maybe, she will find a true love for herself. So, at last, he explains to her that the previous night, he had heard some religious man saying that only God loves us for what we are. This means that God never loves us for our looks but for our inner beauty.