withering, and wisdom

its an odd thing that someone would honestly refer to themselves as a dying tree. i know why he did it. in the poem "the coming of wisdom with time," the author, William Yeats refers to himself as a tree with many leaves and he was waving them but he had no roots. these leavesn were lies, because in the second line he refers to his youth and all of htis lying and how he swayed his leaves, which could be a metaphor for him lying. he then goes on to say that he will wither into the truth...so as he gets older his roots get deeper, which means he gains more wisdom, but he is getting older, or whithering, so its quite the double edged sword. i really enjoy this metaphor for knowledge gain!