Among+School+Children

=**Among School Children** =

 **I**  I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;  A kind old nun in a white hood replies;  The children learn to cipher and to sing,  To study reading-books and histories,  To cut and sew, be neat in everything  In the best modern way — the children’s eyes  In momentary wonder stare upon  A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

 **II**  I dream of a Ledaean body, bent  Above a sinking fire, a tale that she  Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event  That changed some childish day to tragedy —  Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Or else, to alter Plato’s parable, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **III** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And thinking of that fit of grief or rage <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> I look upon one child or t’other there <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And wonder if she stood so at that age — <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> For even daughters of the swan can share <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Something of every paddler’s heritage — <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And had that colour upon cheek or hair, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And thereupon my heart is driven wild: <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> She stands before me as a living child.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **IV** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Her present image floats into the mind — <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Did Quattrocento finger fashion it <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And took a mess of shadows for its meat? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And I though never of Ledaean kind <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Had pretty plumage once — enough of that, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Better to smile on all that smile, and show <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **V** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Honey of generation had betrayed, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> As recollection or the drug decide, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Would think her Son, did she but see that shape <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> With sixty or more winters on its head, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> A compensation for the pang of his birth, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **VI** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Plato thought nature but a spume that plays <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Solider Aristotle played the taws <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Upon the bottom of a king of kings; <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> What a star sang and careless Muses heard: <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **VII** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Both nuns and mothers worship images, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> But those the candles light are not as those <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> That animate a mother’s reveries, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> But keep a marble or a bronze repose. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And yet they too break hearts — O presences <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> That passion, piety or affection knows, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> And that all heavenly glory symbolise — <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **VIII** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Labour is blossoming or dancing where <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Nor beauty born out of its own despair, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> How can we know the dancer from the dance?

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">For an online lecture on the poem, click [|here]. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Back to William Butler Yeats