An Analysis of Broken Dreams by W.B. Yeats

A lot of Yeats’ poems about love are linked back to the love of his life, Maud. She is represented in many forms in Yeats’ poetry and Broken Dreams is no exception. By using Maud, Broken Dreams involves themes such as loss, love and time. ‘THERE is grey in your hair. Young men no longer...’ In these first two lines Yeats has set the basis of what the poem will be about, comparing Maud to what she was like when she was young and what she is like during the writing of the poem. Yeats switches between the past and the present to present this but instead of using the past tense he goes back to how he remembers Maud and uses it as the present. It can therefore be inferred that Yeats does not want to let go of the past but has done it for so long that it has become his reality, it is no longer just in his dreams. The dream he is living is then broken when he sees her again looking old and grey.
After Yeats’ dreams come the memories of the woman. In three of the five stanzas Yeats repeats the words ‘Vague memories, nothing but memories.’ Yeats’ actual memories of her have faded as he got older, another result of time and ageing. Yeats can only remember a small amount about her, a large amount of that being her looks and beauty, he has been dreaming about that one thing for so long that he has forgotten everything else about her. It is suggested that even the memories that he still has become blurred and they are not as they actually were. In the fourth stanza she enters a lake with one small imperfection that makes her stand out, but if she were to leave the lake it is implied that this imperfection will disappear and she will be utterly perfect. That imperfection is the one of her characteristics that makes her so appealing to Yeats and so even more memorable, if that were to go then perhaps he will forget her altogether.
Both the themes of time and memory have been to do with the loss of it. Following on from losing the memories of her, Yeats contemplates never