William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 at Georgeville, Sandymouth Avenue, Dublin, and was the first child of John Butler Yeats and Susan Mary Pollenfex Yeats. The Yeats family produced many family member who distinguished themselves in the arts including his William's artist father, his well-known artist brother, John Butler Jr. (Jack), and and his sisters whose fine embroidery has survived. The Yeats family was often in Co. Sligo, where William's maternal grandparents lived. William loved to hear the old stories and superstitions such as the dreaded fear of fairies stealing away children if their parents were not vigilent. The Yeats family later moved to London. In 1923, William Butler Yeats won the Nobel Prize for literature. Although William died in the south of France in 1939, his body was reinterred at Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, as per his wishes, where he and his siblings had spent many happy hours in the beautiful west of Ireland. This poem is about the Glencar waterfall of Co. Leitrim, a county which borders Co. Sligo. THE STOLEN CHILD 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 berries 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 grey 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 is 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, >From a world more full of weeping than he can understand." -- William Butler Yeats, 1889