RJ COLLEGE OF ARTS, SCIENCE & COMMERCE

MA ENGLISH –PART II (2018-2019)

PAPER I, SEMESTER III

COURSE TITLE : POETRY FROM CHAUCER TO THE PRESENT
POEM : THE STOLEN CHILD
POET : WB YEATS

PRESENTATION BY:
RAJALAKSHMI VARADARAJAN
ROLL NO. 37
 THE STOLEN CHILD - WB YEATS
• WB Yeats Born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865, William Butler Yeats was the
son of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in
County Sligo, where his parents were raised, and in London. He returned to Dublin
at the age of fifteen to continue his education and study painting, but quickly
discovered he preferred poetry. Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class, Yeats
became involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural
influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian period, which sought to
promote the spirit of Ireland’s native heritage. Though Yeats never learned Gaelic
himself, his writing at the turn of the century drew extensively from sources in
Irish mythology and folklore. Also a potent influence on his poetry was the Irish
revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889, a woman equally famous for
her passionate nationalist politics and her beauty. 
• Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite
Irish independence from England, his verse reflected a pessimism about the
political situation in his country and the rest of Europe.
• Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, he is remembered as an
important cultural leader, as a major playwright (he was one of the founders of
the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin), and as one of the very greatest poets—
in any language—of the century. W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in
1923 and died in 1939 at the age of seventy-three.
• His most famous poems include The Lake of Innisfree
 SUMMARY OF THE POEM, THE STOLEN CHILD
• Stolen Child by W.B Yeats was included in the volume of poems named Crossways which was published in
the year 1889. It was written in 1886 and published in 1889.
• William Butler Yeats was 21 when he composed this poem. The poem celebrates the stories of Ireland which
his mother loved. It revolves around a group of fairies who lure a child away from his home to a fairy world.

• Stanza 1: 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
• The poet describes the ‘leafy island’ where the fairies live. The leafy island lies where the rocky high land of Sleuth Wood
touches the water of the lake. Sleepy rats are being awakened by herons with the noise of their wings flapping. The fairies
hid their fairy pots which are full of stolen berries and red cherries. The fairies call the human child to come to the waters
of the lake and wild rock. The fairies asks the child to walk hand in hand with them towards their fairy island because the
world in which the child lives is more full of miseries and sorrows than he can understand.
 THE STOLEN CHILD – WB YEATS (STANZA 2)

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.

The fairies talk about a place that is far away from the distant Rosses, where the stream of moonlight falls on the grey sands
and brighten them, where the fairies walk all night and dance, join hands together and cast glances at one another till the
moon has reached heaven. The fairies tells us that they jump here and there, chase bubbles at night while the world full of
troubles sleeps and is full of anxieties even when they are sleeping. The fairies call the child to come to the fairy island
because the child lives in such a world which is fuller of miseries and tears than he can comprehend

.
 POETIC DEVICES/STYLE & STRUCTURE
• Themes • Rhyme Scheme-ABAB CCDD EEFF
• - Ireland • Use of Refrain
• - Society • Imagery
• - Childhood • Alliteration
• - Mystery • Metaphor
• - Irish Folklore /Celtic • Diction
• - Freedom
• - Escape
 STANZA 3
• 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.
• “wandering water gushes… pools
among the rushes…young
streams”, here again an audience
witnesses the tactical ambiguity in
Yeats’ descriptions. The soft
alliteration of “wandering
water” creates a mystical serenity
and the adjective “gushes” rolls
softly off the tongue, juxtaposed
by the imagery of “bath[ing] a
star“, both ideas create a continuous
flow of romantic imagery apparent
throughout the whole stanza
 STANZA 4
• 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 understa
• The ballad structure acts as a mechanism by which Yeats
disguises the corrupt nature of the controlling ‘faeries’
confirmed by the shift in refrain of the last stanza. Having
taken now the child’s willingness to come with them, the
faeries reveal to the child the day to day warmth of his
own world which he will be missing henceforth.
•  in the last stanza the same line reads “For he comes, the
human child” disregarding any previous temptation. The
absence of the “O” in this refrain reinforces the argument
that the faeries are evil and utterly disturbing. The idea of
the child now having “a faery, hand in hand” suddenly
seems claustrophobic and paints a picture of the faeries
with the visage of a demon. The refrain has also shifted to
present tense “for he comes..” it is therefore a continuous
happening and doesn’t provide the reader with closure,
rather leaving them feeling great discomfort and
confirming the menacing and threatening nature of the
faeries.   
 CONCLUSION
• The Stolen Child is recognised to be one of the more notable of Yeats’ early poems. Published in
1889,  in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, the traditional Irish ballad form reflects the early
influence of Romantic Literature and Pre-Raphaelite verse. Yeats uses ambiguous language to explore the
notion of ‘the evil versus the angelic’ via the motif of the Irish mythological creatures: the ‘faeries’, defined
as goddesses who control people’s lives. This definition holds ambiguity as whether the control is of an evil
or angelic nature, however the poem progresses to reveal the cold and severe undertone of the evil and
corrupt abduction of the child.
• In his early work, Yeats used soft, romantic words, and often based poems on Irish legends. In this poem, a
human child is enticed away into a fairyland. The child forgets his friends and family at home because the
fairies are so poetic and enchanting, thus he follows them; they convince him that their world is joyful and
playful, while the human world is full of tears. The poem progresses as a journey through the country,
around the town of Sligo, in Ireland. This is where Yeats spent his youth, as it is his mother’s hometown.
• The plot of the poem is a metaphor for the return to innocence, which is characterised by childhood. The
‘fantasy’ world Yeats creates sharply contrasts with the real world, representing his dissatisfaction with the
real world.