书名：When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays and Fairy Tales当你老了：叶芝早期诗歌、戏剧及童话故事

作者：W. B. Yeats叶芝
出版社名称：Penguin Books
出版时间：2015
语种：英文
ISBN：9780143107644
商品尺寸：13 x 1.5 x 19.8 cm
版本：平装
页数：368
When You are Old

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; 
……
当你老了 
当你老了，白发茫茫，睡眼蒙眬，
壁炉前打盹儿，请取出这本诗歌，
轻轻吟咏，追忆你过去温柔的眼神，
回想它们深深的倒影；
……
这首有名的When You are Old《当你老了 》是浪漫主义诗人威廉·巴特勒·叶芝于1893年创作的诗歌，是叶芝献给女友毛特·冈妮热烈而真挚的爱情诗篇。诗歌语言简明，但情感丰富真切。叶芝于1923年获得诺贝尔文学奖，评审委员会对他的评语是：“他那永远富有灵感的诗歌，以一种高度艺术的形式表现了一整个民族的精神。”
When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays and Fairy Tales《当你老了：叶芝早期诗歌、戏剧及童话故事》为Penguin Books推出的英文原版，由Rob Doggett编辑、作序并注释。书中所选作品均为叶芝早期作品，包括Irish Fairy Tales《爱尔兰童话故事》（1892）、Poems《诗集》（1895）、The Wind Among the Reeds《苇间风》（1899）、TheCelticTwilight《凯尔特的薄暮》（1902）。
叶芝早期作品多取材于爱尔兰本土的传奇与民谣。他是爱尔兰民族主义运动的参加者，因此政治是他诗中的一大主题；而与叶芝的民族主义激情紧密相连的是他对献身于爱尔兰文化复兴的杰出女演员莫德·冈的爱情，因而爱情对于叶芝也是个终生的主题。
阅读叶芝早期的这些作品，读者将遇见一个神秘的失恋吟游诗人和爱尔兰民族主义者相结合的叶芝。

Beautiful early writings by one of the 20th century’s greatest poets on the 150th anniversary of his birth

The poems, prose, and drama gathered in When You Are Old present a fresh portrait of the Nobel Prize–winning writer as a younger man: the 1890s aesthete who dressed as a dandy, collected Irish folklore, dabbled in magic, and wrote heartrending poems for his beloved, the beautiful, elusive Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne. Included here are such celebrated, lyrical poems as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” as well as Yeats’s imaginative retellings of Irish fairytales—including his first major poem, “The Wanderings of Oisin,” based on a Celtic fable—and his critical writings, which offer a fascinating window onto his artistic theories. Through these enchanting works, readers will encounter Yeats as the mystical, lovelorn bard and Irish nationalist popular during his own lifetime.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
威廉·巴特勒·叶芝，（William Butler Yeats，1865~1939），爱尔兰著名诗人、剧作家和散文家。因“其高度艺术化且洋溢着灵感的诗作表达了整个民族的灵魂”，1923年度被授予诺贝尔文学奖。叶芝一生创作丰富，其诗吸收浪漫主义、唯美主义、神秘主义、象征主义和玄学诗的精华，几经变革，终于熔炼出独特的风格。艾略特曾誉之为“二十世纪伟大的英语诗人”。

William Butler Yeats(1865-1939) is one of the great and innovative poets of the twentieth century. Much of his most vigorous verse on love, sex, Irish and international politics, the complexities of the occult and the “sedentary toil” of poetry was produced in the years between his fiftieth birthday in 1915 and his death in 1939.