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.
---
From W. B. Yeats "The Stolen Child" 1889
4 comments:
I love YEATS and that is one of his most yearningly beautiful.
For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
I always wanted to get stolen by fairies. I still do but I think I'd have to take my family with me now - or most of them.
Do you know that they used to believe that autistic children were changelings? Hence their otherworldliness.
he can understand
He He He not You. OKay?
I used to wander around Epsom Downs on afternoons off school reciting this and other Yeats poems and getting strange looks. Maybe the faeries did touch me a bit after all.
I didn't know that about autistic children - very moving.
Yes. It's because autism becomes apparent at around 18 months-2 years thus the child would appear changed so parents believe that their child was stolen away in the night by the fairies and replaced.
Today we just blame the MMR ;)
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