Authors...Yeats "Politics"

"How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms."

This is one of my favorite poems by Yeats. It was one of the last that he wrote before he died, age 73, on January 28, 1939. In his revised edition of the poems, Richard J. Finneran places it last among the "Last Poems," apparently following the order Yeats had intended. R.F. Foster, one of Yeats' biographers,  describes the "message" in the poem as "poignant, resigned, and regretful."  It was written in May, 1938, more than a year before the beginning of World War II, yet it was a time of rising panic over Germany's troop movements. 

However, if the poem is read outside of its historical context (as perhaps it should be), I think we get a truer sense of the "message," one that is universal.  It's a poem describing old age and the pathos that accompanies a recognition of one's mortality. What is important in life is not power and the greed that seems to accompany it. What is important is kindness and companionship and the happiness they bring. The pity is that one always seems so lost in the turmoils of living that one doesn't recognize what is important until it's too late...too late to hold life in one's arms.