Greetings Readers,
Today I am featuring a Poet of the Day and an Artist of the Day post, combining the enchanting poetry of William Butler Yeats with the mystical art work of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite.
I’m a big fan of Yeats and have shared other work of his here on Words and Pictures by Pamela Leavey in the past and I am also a lover of all things fairies as I have also noted here recently.
I normally share my photography with “words” here in my posts, but my three recent ekphrastic poems inspired me to step out of the box and share more art here, and not just my photography. The Yeats poem below required that I share some fairy art with it and when I was looking online for some Cicely Mary Barker fairy art I found Ida Rentoul Outhwaite’s work — it absolutely just jumped out at me and begged to be in this post.
I hope you all enjoy the poem and the art work!
The 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 berrys
And of 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 gray 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 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,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
Thanks so much for reading! Stay tuned for more posts including a new Daily Affirmation and a Photo Essay coming up in the next couple of days… I so hope you enjoy!
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Footnote:
William Butler Yeats write The Stolen Child in 1886. It is one of his most well known early poems. Yeats was quite interested in Irish mythology and he published two books on the topic of fairies — Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland in 1892 and Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry in 1888.
About the artist, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite — Ida Rentoul Outhwaite was an Australian artist who was born in 1888. She died in 1960. Her work primarily pictured the magical realm of fairies and elves.
...happens to be my favourite Yeats poem ♥️ https://open.substack.com/pub/stuartjwilson/p/words-yeats-poem-the-stolen-child?r=2r1bhp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Wonderful poem and artwork. Freedom, Faeries are Fetching us Away to a Fantasy Land, where Birds and Bunnies are attentive to the voice of the flute. What is she saying?