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Comment 15 of 15, added on July 13th, 2009 at 3:37 AM.
To me this poem is almost Keatsean. just an in Ode to the Nightingale Keats wanted to escape from the world of pain and sorrow in to the magical wonderland of the bird similarly the fairies in Yeast's poem want to take the child away from this land of "fever and fret". What, according to me, is remarkable in The Stolen Child and also marks a departure from Keats's poem is that the fairies also speak about the sorrows that the child will face once he leaves the mortal world. while, for keats the coming back to the world is not a happy experience, Yeats focuses on the fact that it is good to make an escape to a fairy land but earthly bindings cannot be totally negated.
Sriparna Dutta from India
Comment 14 of 15, added on June 9th, 2009 at 4:27 PM.
This poem, I have noticed is so different in it's meaning for everone who reads it, depending mostly on their own life experiences.
It seems to me that since the faeries are the ones speaking in the poem, it is not they who wish to steal the child but it is they who view the child as stolen. The Faeries for me, represent the thing that calls to each of us at night when we are quiet which knows that there must be something better in this world than the dissapointing reality of suffering and hardships that we have come to accept as inevitable. The small pleasures we find in the "human" world (as mentioned in the last stanza) serve only to lull us into complacency and in order to find this better place, we know in our hearts that it may be necessary to abandon them. Whether the poem ends in suicide or simply a new mindset is something my friends and I have been mulling over for a long, long time. There has also been a suggestion that the faerie may actually have something to do with the use of absinthe and it's hallucinagenic properties (I'm not inclined to agree with this however). As I said, this poem is very susceptible to interpretation based on ones own experiences but I really feel as though Yeats is using the faerie mythology from his own childhood to put a name and face to the things within our own selves that want constantly to lure us away from reality and toward a more ideal life.
Melissa from United States
Comment 13 of 15, added on August 17th, 2007 at 11:38 AM.
There are four typos in the last lines.
Come away, O human child!
To to [ the ] waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to [ 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 be [ 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 you. [no period] [ can understand ]
Jock from United States
Comment 12 of 15, added on May 17th, 2007 at 6:29 PM.
Although I agree with most of the previous comments below, I do think there is also a rather darker side to the faeries. During the beginning of the poem, the faeries describes the beauty of faeryland in comparison to the misery of the human world. Once the child has agreed to leave his old life though, the faeries begin to describe his losses, "he'll hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hilside, Or the kettle on the hob, Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob, Round and round the oatmeal chest."
Everyone has his own interpretation, my own being that the child was tricked into sacraficing his human life.
nicole from United States
Comment 11 of 15, added on January 7th, 2007 at 10:02 PM.
I find that when one eats peas before going to bed, it helps quicken the digestive system so one awakes fully refreshed!
Bojangles from Faroe Islands
Comment 10 of 15, added on May 11th, 2006 at 10:26 PM.
My opinion on this poem is that Yeats is trying to see child abduction through the eyes of the said child. (Harry, age 13)
Harry from United States
Comment 9 of 15, added on April 27th, 2006 at 11:26 PM.
Irish folklore, says that faeries stole not only children but also adults. They stole them deep into the forest, where according to the folklore faeries live. They made people join them in a series of dances. I recommend Gary Stadler's song "The Dance of the Wild Faeries" which explains all this. All though the poem is a metaphor, i think this information could be useful.
Pia from New Zealand
Comment 8 of 15, added on April 27th, 2006 at 11:25 PM.
Does anyone know other poems related to faeries?
Jake from Australia
Comment 7 of 15, added on April 27th, 2006 at 11:15 PM.
I dont know mch of Yeats, but I think his an exceptional poem "The Stolen Child". Ive heard also the song of this poem by Loreena McKennitt, I recommend it. Talking about the poem, I think Ian McKenna has a similar idea to mine. The faeries in this poem, probably try to save kids in suffering, they stole them to prevent the kid being "stolen" by others, when a kid is mistreated he is "stolen". Another reason why I like this poem is about the faerie talk, I find faeries quite interesting, and this might sound childlish, but I belive they are real.
Ricardo from Italy
Comment 6 of 15, added on April 20th, 2006 at 1:46 AM.
I agree with the nationalism comments, but I'm not entirely sure that he was referencing colonialism. (Remember, he was a Protestant Irishman, and so closer to the British than the Catholic Irish who tended to protest more.) I'm of the opinion that the Ireland he missed was more cultural than factual/literal, and more a childhood dream than any type of reality. Perhaps he missed his memories of Ireland.
I'm basing this on the idealized, fantasic wording of the poem. Faeries are not precisely common, everyday phenomena, and he liberally laces the poem with mythology/folklore references gleaned from childhood stories and superstitions. Adding to this poem his other works, you can tell that he's obsessed with the supernatural and mythological. He's trying to recapture something.
He wrote a compendium of Irish folklore, called Mythology, in which he records fragmented tales. They're told in an almost childlike manner, often playing with choronology and typical story format (no clear beginning-middle-end) in ways that children often unconsciously do. The fact that he chose Irish myths, and went back to Ireland to listen to children's stories as an adult, seems to indicate to me a sense of lost childhood and the lost "ideal" Ireland that one could sense as a child, when one could believe more in faerie than British opporessors and revolts. Of course, as an Irish American, I'd love to turn this into a manifesto of anticolonial rage, but I'm reading it as a quasi-Freudian attempt to recapture childhood through fantasies.
Mairead from United States
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To me this poem is almost Keatsean. just an in Ode to the Nightingale Keats wanted to escape from the world of pain and sorrow in to the magical wonderland of the bird similarly the fairies in Yeast's poem want to take the child away from this land of "fever and fret". What, according to me, is remarkable in The Stolen Child and also marks a departure from Keats's poem is that the fairies also speak about the sorrows that the child will face once he leaves the mortal world. while, for keats the coming back to the world is not a happy experience, Yeats focuses on the fact that it is good to make an escape to a fairy land but earthly bindings cannot be totally negated.
Sriparna Dutta from India