St. Anne's Kindergarten Class, This photo was taken at the Ursuline Convent, Waterford.: photographer unknown, 17 June 1927 (National Library of Ireland)
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
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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 symbolise —
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;
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 symbolise —
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;
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?
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?
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): Among School Children, 1926, from The Tower (1928)
This poem was writ after a visit by the poet to a convent school in Waterford in 1926
Lunchtime. Some very [well] behaved young children sitting down to their lunch at a kindergarten in the buffer zone between Georgia and South Ossetia. This school was supported by the Danish Refugee Council who, among other organisations, have helped to re-build homes, businesses and schools in the years following the 2008 South Ossetia war.: photo by c_c_clason, 7 November 2011
and wonder if she stood so at that age
Mountain children on steps of school in Breathitt, Jackson County, Kentucky: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
Children in front of school, Puerto Rico: photo by Melvin Lauver, c. 1946-48; image by Tom Lehman, 20 July 2011
Children playing by road near school house, iowa or Kansas [?]: photo by John Vachon, c. March 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
Three children playing "hide and seek" in a forest (Versteckspiel im Wald): Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim (1808-1879), n.d., oil on tinplate, 17 x 20 cm
Children's Games (detail: "Hide and Seek"): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)
Children's Games (detail: "Blind Man's Buff"): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)
Children's Games: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)
Blind-Man's Buff: artist unknown, before 1830, published by Paul Jarrard and Sons (London, England). Print made within the lifetime of King George IV of England (12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830); image by Daderot, 30 April 2008
Blind Man's Buff: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 1788-89, oil on canvas, 269 x 350 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
Blindman's Buff (detail): Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1775-80, oil on canvas (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
Children from an Otomi indigenous family pass the time drawing, on the sidewalk of their apartment building after it was declared uninhabitable by authorities after Tuesday's 7.1 earthquake, at the corner of Guanajuato and Monterrey streets in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017.: photo by Marco Ugarte/AP, 23 September 2017
Children from an Otomi indigenous family pass the time drawing, on the sidewalk of their apartment building after it was declared uninhabitable by authorities after Tuesday's 7.1 earthquake, at the corner of Guanajuato and Monterrey streets in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017.: photo by Marco Ugarte/AP, 23 September 2017
Children play in yard of Ruston, Washington home, while Tacoma Smelter stack showers area with arsenic and lead residue: photo by Gene Daniels for the US Environmental Protection Agency, August 1972
Wonderful post, Tom. No one writes so enigmatically but with such clarity as WBY.
ReplyDeleteDylan: Highlands (live, 1999)
ReplyDeleteDylan: Jokerman (live, Brixton Academy, 25 November 2003)
Dylan: Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) (live, c 1998)
Thanks, Terry. That sentence gets it, and him.
ReplyDeletegran poema...maravillosas metáforas...!!
ReplyDeletelove this:
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
Lovely poem and photos
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Sandra and Hilton.
ReplyDeleteThis poem's been growing on me for almost 60 years now.
For a long time it seemed too near (I'm Irish, went to schools taught by nuns), then too far away (technically beyond our ken), but then, a few years ago... click.
I have to stand back and admire gratefully, knowing there'll be no more poems like this to grow upon us like kindly fungi, ever.
Oh Tom, oh Tom
ReplyDeleteHeartbreakingly beautiful. As though reading the poem for the first time and in its proper context, those children. I recall a day in 1973 arriving at your place after you and Angelica and Juliet had just finished watching the old film version of David Copperfield and, with an account of it, you drew me into the human warmth of the tale. Now some 45 years later and the same gift illuminating.
Thanks so much.
Hanf, always lovely to hear from you, this now makes it official - my favourite thread of the M-M-Millennium!
ReplyDeleteBring back 1973! Please! 1937! Anything!