Aline Kilmer’s speaker contrasts two stages of life. As a young person, she carried an oddly old, weary heart that dismissed her longings as childish and her griefs as nothing new. That inner voice urged restraint, warned of costs and consequences, and treated passion as foolishness. Now, later in life, the heart has reversed itself: it insists that no one has ever felt exactly what she feels and begs her to throw prudence away in exchange for happiness. The speaker admits that some of this new recklessness may be trustworthy. The mood is bittersweet and gently ironic—there is loss in realizing that youthful wisdom was really a kind of emotional shutdown, but also a fragile hope in the heart’s late insistence on feeling deeply. It captures the strange freedom of unlearning the guardedness we mistake for maturity.
Unlearning — Summary
When I was young my heart was old, My heart was rich and very wise : Now all its wisdom has been told And all its wealth is fairy gold And all its joy futilities.
My heart would say, when I was young, "It would be well to grieve no more. The griefs you sing had all been sung Before you learned your mother-tongue, And all your tears been shed before."
When I was young my heart would say: "What childish things are these you seek? The piper's price is large to pay And there will come a reckoning day!" In this wise way my heart would speak.
But now it cries continually. It says : "None ever felt as you ! Cast prudence to the winds, and see How happy I can make you be." And some of what it says is true.