The Stolen Child

Glencar Waterfall, County Leitrim mentioned in the poem

"The Stolen Child" is a poem by William Butler Yeats, published in 1889 in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. Several critics praised the poem.[1]

Overview

The poem shows the early influence of Romantic literature and Pre-Raphaelite verse.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berry
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

The poem was first published in the Irish Monthly in December 1886.

The Stolen Child Media

References

  1. R.F. Foster 1998. W.B. Yeats: a Life. Oxford University Press, pages 56, 75-76. ISBN 0-19-288085-3

Other sources

  • Richard J Finneran (ed) 1994. Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies XII, p91–92. ISBN 0-472-10614-7
  • Terence Brown 2001. The Life of W.B. Yeats, pages 9, 19, 66. Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-22851-9