Among School Children - W.B. Yeats
A Philosophical Reflection on Youth, Age, and the Nature of Being
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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;
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?
W.B. Yeats’s “Among School Children” presents the poet, himself a “sixty-year-old smiling public man,” observing a classroom of children. This setting prompts reflections that bridge personal, philosophical, and mythic realms. The poem weaves together musings on life’s trajectory, the nature of beauty, and the tension between body and soul. In recalling his younger self and drawing upon mythological figures like Leda, Yeats highlights how fleeting youth and physical appearance can be, and how their meaning evolves with time.
In the opening stanza, the poet enters a school and notices the children’s curiosity. This sparks recollections of Maud Gonne (implied by the Leda reference), whom Yeats repeatedly immortalized in his verse. By comparing her to a “Ledaean body,” he connects her youth and grandeur to mythic significance. Yet, the poem extends beyond personal longing to broader ruminations on philosophical thought—Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras appear as touchstones for understanding the relationship between material forms and underlying ideals.
Central to the poem is a quest for unity or wholeness, an idea culminating in the question: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” This final line encapsulates the poem’s deep philosophical inquiry about whether form can ever be separated from the essence it expresses. For Yeats, art, dance, and nature point to a union where boundaries dissolve. The “child” becomes symbolic not just of innocence or potential, but of the constant interplay between body and soul, matter and spirit.
While Yeats acknowledges physical aging, he also resists simplistic nostalgia. The poem explores how accumulated wisdom might reconcile our youthful dreams with our older realities. In pondering Plato’s notion of perfect forms and contrasting it with the tangible world, Yeats suggests that human lives oscillate between the transitory and the transcendent. Ultimately, “Among School Children” insists that life’s beauty, whether in its youthful energy or mature reflection, points toward a deeper, ineffable unity—a vision that eludes final certainty but enriches the poet’s journey.
Throughout the poem, Yeats’s language glides between personal experience and universal symbolism. Observing children at their lessons and the nun who teaches them sparks the poet’s understanding that all human endeavors—whether religious devotion, philosophical questioning, or the joys and trials of motherhood—converge on the desire to reconcile physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. By closing on the image of the dancer and the dance, Yeats leaves readers contemplating the interplay between form and soul, urging us to see each as inseparable from the other in the grand choreography of life.
Key points
1. Yeats juxtaposes youthful innocence with the realities of aging, revealing the fleeting nature of physical beauty.
2. The poem unites personal reflection (through Maud Gonne allusions) with classical philosophy, suggesting life’s grand interplay of body and spirit.
3. Mythical references enrich the theme of transformation, as Leda’s story illuminates the role of fate and form.
4. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” crystallizes the poem’s central inquiry into the inseparability of form and essence.