The Stolen Child

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

 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.

 References 

 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

Category:19th-century British poems
Category:1889 works
Category:1880s poems