"The Stolen Child" - is there hope for recovery?
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 berries
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 Roses
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 dthe oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
William Butler Yeats 1889 (p. 1083 Norton Anthology)
This poem is one that I very much enjoy. It is an escape poem from the trials and tribulations of the 'real' world. I can imagine the people in this period of time were kept continually pressured by the growing industrial mentality. The movement from rural to urban in order to supply the labour market changed life as it had been known.
More than 100 years have passed since this poem was written. Considering that "production" is the emphasis of today, along with "cost-cutting measures", how much has changed? And if these production jobs are disappearing from North America, they are not disappearing from the world, but only capturing the uninitiated into the giant cog that feeds the greed machine.
To escape even for a short time into a wild place hand in hand with a faery from a world full of weeping, may be just what Yeats' imagination needed to write for his time, but does it not yet speak to us in our time? This poem captures my imagination - dances, holding hands, mingling glances, leaping, chasing frothy bubbles. It speaks to the child in me that sometimes needs to escape a weeping world. Oh yes!
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 berries
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 Roses
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 dthe oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
William Butler Yeats 1889 (p. 1083 Norton Anthology)
This poem is one that I very much enjoy. It is an escape poem from the trials and tribulations of the 'real' world. I can imagine the people in this period of time were kept continually pressured by the growing industrial mentality. The movement from rural to urban in order to supply the labour market changed life as it had been known.
More than 100 years have passed since this poem was written. Considering that "production" is the emphasis of today, along with "cost-cutting measures", how much has changed? And if these production jobs are disappearing from North America, they are not disappearing from the world, but only capturing the uninitiated into the giant cog that feeds the greed machine.
To escape even for a short time into a wild place hand in hand with a faery from a world full of weeping, may be just what Yeats' imagination needed to write for his time, but does it not yet speak to us in our time? This poem captures my imagination - dances, holding hands, mingling glances, leaping, chasing frothy bubbles. It speaks to the child in me that sometimes needs to escape a weeping world. Oh yes!
posted by maggiesong at 10:45 PM
4 Comments:
Blithering Savant: I appreciate knowing about The Waterboys. I have not heard this group before. I will follow up on this album.
Glad you stumbled across my blog too because I just learned something new from you. Thanks!
hi Navita! Thanks for your comment on the poem. I'm glad you enjoyed the "escape". Life cannot remain static, and whether we want to see some of the changes that we see happen or not, they do.
Our "fast-paced society", or any society of the past, such as the "Victorians" that we are now looking at (or however any other society would be described in history), has always had need of some relief from the stresses of humans rubbing bones with each other. As social animals, no, it's not that it is "all bad", but yes, I think it can send our senses into overload, where we may then forget to stop filling every moment with busy activity.
The pastoral scene, or in this case, the escape into a faery land, although not a place where we may be able to live our reality, is where we can step off the world for a quiet time of refreshment, and I think Yeats' poem does this.
This poem is truly an escape poem but I would argue that the scene really isn't pastoral at all. The images depicted are really more Romantic or Victorian who were as the professor noted more focused on nature as well as the subconscious. The italicized lines really demonstrate the idea of the mystical and imagination.
I would also say that not everyone bought into the idea of the industrial revoloution. If everyone did then there would be no farmers which would translate into famine and then everyone would die. Highly morbid and a bit over the top but hey its a fact of life! No food = no living. So I think that some people still had the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of nature. But you're right in the idea that nothing much has changed since the poem was written.
As a society, we're all still caught up in the hustle and bustle of living, working and taking a moment to just relax is just sheer lunacy. Further when we do try to get away from it all, everyone in the GTA seems to pile onto the 400 to make the great trip up to the cottage, where they inevitably waste away in traffic getting up there and then coming home again. Yeah, thats my kind of relaxation!
sv
Maggie, RK tells me you're having a difficulty posting pictures online. Drop me an email at sharpjATwebDOTnet, and let me know how you plan to be hosting your pictures, and I'll try to help you through. Then please delete this comment so my email address isn't lingering in hyperspace for Spambots to pick up.
BTW, you might want to check out the versions of Yeats done by one The Waterboys' primary influences, Van Morrison. He did interesting settings of WB's "Crazy Jane on God" and "Before The World Was Made." And Joni Mitchell did a peculiar version of "The Second Coming" on her album Night Ride Home.As for "The Stolen Child," you can see more clearly than usual Wm Blake's influence on Yeats. Worth a look, perhaps?
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