A Lifelong Understanding of William Butler Yeats

To A Child Dancing In The Wind

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind!

W.B. Yeats (°13/6/1865 - †28/1/1939)

I didn't need a book or website to write this down. I remember this beautiful poem from secondary school. At the age of 17, I discovered I knew it by heart and I have rehearsed it since then all my life, especially in moments of woe. The odd thing is that the meaning revealed itself only after many years and it still does !

The first five verses seem to be about untroubled childhood, but then the poem takes a sudden turn to the opposite: the pain of adulthood:

• The fool's triumph
• Love lost as soon as won
• The best labourer dead and all the sheaves to bind
• The monstrous crying of wind

I remember well our English teacher explaining these aspects belong to adulthood, and I accepted that, but I considered it at that time rather as "occasional inconveniences" adult life may bring: some idiots around you, occasional idiocy in yourself, did Yeats have bad luck in love - was it 'real' love?, 'sometimes' we all have too much work, we are all afraid of the power of nature.

It is only after years you discover the teacher was right in another way. The fool's triumph, love lost as soon as won and all the sheaves to bind, rather belong to our human condition, and they are not "occasional" but perpetual struggles we have to deal with in our adult life. And nobody really escapes.

This is the gradually self-revealing truth of William Butler Yeats, born on this calendar day 151 years ago.