Commit Poetry: The Stolen Child – Complete

 

I’m still working on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock–which is soon to be complete. But below is my whole recitation of The Stolen Child as dared by Tweetspeak Poetry for National Poetry Month. What do you think about the poem? I know there are some days I’d like to run away from some of this world’s weeping to some leafy island and hang out with herons and chase bubbles and play with trout.

 

The Stolen Child

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 berrys
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 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.

— W. B. Yeats

 

Tweetspeak Poetry posted videos of The Waterboys and Loreena McKennitt singing these verses. And here’s yet another live version of Loreena McKennitt

 

 

And now you should run over to Tweetspeak Poetry and take their Stolen Child quiz. It’s a flipper, and it’s fun.

Oh, and here’s me with my completion badge.