�AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN
by William Butler Yeats�
Analysis of
ABOUT THE POET
William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, at Sandymount near Dublin in Ireland. He was fascinated by Irish legends and the occult, which influenced his early works. His later works were more influenced by physical and realistic subject matter and with the cyclical theories of life. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. Yeats wrote this poem, ‘Among School Children,’ most probably in 1926 after his visit in that year to a progressive convent school at Waterfront, St. Otteran’s School.
ABOUT THE POEM
The poem begins with an observation about the young girls who were awed by the poet’s visit to their school. Then the poem moves away from direct observations to a reflection about a young girl he knew and to a philosophical reflection about life, youth and the creative process.
OVERVIEW
ANALYSIS
The speaker relates his personal experience of visiting a school run in the church. He understands the age difference between the children and himself as well as the change in the system of education.
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 history,
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.
ANALYSIS
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
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
ANALYSIS
III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.
ANALYSIS
Poet is still engulfed in his fantasy; he now tries to imagine Maud Gonne as a school child, sitting among the children in the class. He draws parallel among each child to Maud Gonne, as she a child of similar age; He sees everybody shares almost similar appearance and qualities; had his beloved be in the same age she would have been the same. Knowing this his heart beats fast as he sees his beloved in the form of children in the classroom.
III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.
ANALYSIS
IV
Her present image floats into the mind—
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
ANALYSIS
The speaker tries to imagine Maud Gonne as an old woman who drinks wind and eat shadows. He compares her present state as the paint of the Italian painter. He turns back to himself and understands that his youth is too faded making him like an old scarecrow. However, he opts to behave in a pleasant way by smiling with others. Though he urges to stay positive, his grimace of lost relationship at the ripe age is evident by his hesitant speech.
IV
Her present image floats into the mind—
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
ANALYSIS
V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
ANALYSIS
The poet wonders whether a mother sees her child as a figure of an old person when he/she is in the form of an infant. Poet further questions that: is it worthy to have such a labor pain to give a life knowing it is going to face deterioration? Here, poet contrasts the child who is naturally playful and fresh to the same child in his old age with white hair. He further explains the uncertainty of the future life of a child as nobody can predict the future. The poet suddenly transforms his view point from personal to more universal and philosophical revealing the transitory nature of human life.
V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
ANALYSIS
allusions:
VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
ANALYSIS
Poet discusses the ironical nature of life. Whatever the theories of nature presented by philosophers, they have only one common reality, that is: everything changes, everything undergoes decay and destruction. Despite of the great theories of nature and life, philosophers too get old and become scarecrows.
VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
ANALYSIS
VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolize—
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;
ANALYSIS
Poet generalizes nuns’ devotion towards idols of god, mothers’ affection towards their children and lovers’ love towards the beloved that would bring sufferings to them because all those emotions are self-generated to create attachments. Poet concludes that human sufferings are caused by human’s attachments towards animate, inanimate and abstract things.
VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolize—
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;
ANALYSIS
VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
ANALYSIS
The poet examines the connection between the body and the soul. He shows that the body and soul must be united to come to the perfection. That means, true beauty cannot be gained if the mind is sad; similarly, mind cannot be happy if the body is sick. As well as, only through the brain work, one cannot be a perfect person. To be perfect, the body, brain and soul should be united and reply equally. Poet takes the chestnut tree as an example, as he says the flower, leaf or trunk cannot individually decide the chestnut tree. All those parts together create and define the tree as a chestnut tree. Similarly, dancer and dance are not two things. This ultimately defines that: physical love, lust, sex; religious feeling, the quest for an ideal; knowledge and theory and ideas separately do not define human, human is the complete package.
VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
OVERALL
Yeats seems to aware the readers about life through his own life experiences. He defines life is its own twists and turns, changes and deterioration and happiness and despair. One cannot reject the nature of life as well as those changes do not define a person. If you become an old person, that is not your fault, that is the nature of life. Understanding this help a person to lead a happy life. It is the lesson Yeats learnt when he walks among the school children.
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