The Four Ages of Man

The Four Ages of Man

He with body waged a fight,
But body won; it walks upright.

Then he struggled with the heart;
Innocence and peace depart.

Then he struggled with the mind;
His proud heart he left behind.

Now his wars on God begin;
At stroke of midnight God shall win.

W. B. Yeats

When I read this poem, it reminded me of the riddle asked by the Sphinx to travelers and passerby: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?". The poem and the riddle are both similar in that they depict the different stages men (humans) go through. Still they differ in the way they depict those stages as they are given different connotations.

In the riddle these stages appear to be something true, observable and logical. But in Yeats' poem the element of fate or inevitability is also portrayed because “At the stroke of midnight God shall win”, meaning that death cannot be avoided. This element appears also in Leda and the Swan as it was Leda's destiny and/or fate to be impregnated by Zeus, sealing also her children's fate. Said element can also be found in the certainty of the Second Coming.

I also want to point out that in the poem the man is constantly fighting and loses a bit of himself in every struggle, and at the end of the poem I got the feeling that everything he went through was pointless, that all his efforts were for nothing. It felt like his life was futile.

I also noticed that Yeats repeats “Then he struggled with” at the beginning of the second and third stanza. I don't know if it symbolizes that those two periods are of transition between the first and last age, or if it is to make a connection between heart and mind. The only thing I know for certain is that it has a hidden meaning, considering that in this poems, every choice of words is completely deliberate.

Even though I make a connection between the poem and the stages humans go through naturally, there are also some similarities to the four ages of Hinduism (ashramas) and the four ages of man depicted by Ovid.