Dark Enchantment (35 page)

Stolen Child

By William Butler Yeats

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 the 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,

From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.