"though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.
This was a really short poem but I liked it. I felt like it was one of those things that you read and you immediately try to see the deeper, philosophical meaning to it but as I read and thought about it, I thought the meaning was pretty simple. I figured that Yeats was just talking about the cycle of life and how a person grows and gains knowledge over time. He begins his poem with life and ends it with death. I believe the first part of the poem before the first semi-colon is talking about how a person may learn many different things but essentially they are still that person, who was once born knowing nothing. The next part is talking about how as children we learn many things unintentionally because our purpose is not to learn things but to just live and have fun. The last part is about dying, when we are younger we often cover the truth to make ourselves happy or to protect ourselves but I believe when we do we uncover many of those things and see certain things as they are. I read a couple analysis' of this poem and one pointed out something really interesting about the leaves and withering into truth. They said that they thought of the world as the tree and that each human being is a leaf on that tree, and they only have a certain amount of time to live before they wither away.
I think you're right! We do only have so long.
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