Answer:
Love is being portrayed as a character in the last stanza of the poem.
Explanation:
William Butler Yeats' poem "When You Are Old" is a poem about the a woman who the speaker loves. He is predicting, warning the woman to think to when she gets old, and how she might regret about the ones she loves now.
Yeats is warning the lady about the men who are in love with her now. When she gets old, she will realize that he, the speaker, was the only one who loved her for who she is. Unlike the other men who loved her for her body, he loved her soul. Warning her from making mistakes, he asks her to think long-term. The third stanza of which the excerpt is taken from, he characterizes "love" as a person who has ran away from her. Just as she had rejected him (the speaker), he is implying here that he will find it hard to let go and would have given up on her too, when she realizes it's too late.
