| 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 scare 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.
|
| William Butler Yeats, 1865−1939 |