"The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats

“The Stolen Child” is a poem featured in the collection by W.B. Yeats called Crossways (1889|); he wrote it when he was 24. This sonnet is said to have been composed on the grounds that Yeats' sibling kicked the bucket being an adolescent. Then, it could be assumed that this sonnet is highlighting Yeats' yearning to escape from the world. The principle subjects in this sonnet are those of the fantasy world, which could be interfaced to his yearning to escape from the world. Additionally, the sonnet could be seen as a youngster’s snatching (henceforth the expression 'The Stolen Child' as the title) by the "faeries" who are detestable and are baiting the kid into the universe of dreams. Likewise, the plot of the ballad is an allegory for coming back to blamelessness, which is portrayed by youth. The "dream" world Yeats creates strongly diverges from the present reality, showing his disappointment with this reality. This ballad gives the thought of the regular maxim “You do not comprehend what you have got until its gone” as the youngster's disappointment had made him lose his spot in the present reality as he is presently lost in false reality.

This poem is characterized by an extraordinary use of Irish legends that encourage a kid to leave the human world surrounding him. Yeats adjusts an old Irish legend about pixies who take human kids and supplant them with changelings. The lyric uses this myth and through it creates a strain between the two universes of the sonnet – the powerful and the characteristic, which subsequently makes the fantasy of dreams and the fantasy of deception. The ballad creates dreamlike pictures of the faeries that endeavor to trap the kid into making his route into the outsider world. This could imply Yeats’ falling into the framework in which he got to be captivated with the existence of mysterious supernatural world.

The last four lines of the first stanza shut in the musicality and the rhyme of the lyric: "To the waters and the wild/ with a faery, as an inseparable unit/ For the world's more loaded with sobbing than you can comprehend". These lines show incongruity as they are telling the youngster that they are actually saving him from his loathsome world while they are actually deceiving and misleading him. This highlights the guiltlessness and naivety of the youngster and shows the fantasy of dreams and figment. Likewise, the lines “the world is more full of sobbing than he can comprehend" imply that the youngster is unable to see the truth of life because of his purity that is effortlessly attracted into the false reality.

All through the third stanza, the sibilance evokes the feeling of senselessness and naughtiness. This accordingly creates the image of the faeries setting a trap and breaking the implication of this dreamlike picture for the kid. This introduces an extremely evil consummation of the sonnet where the kid tragically succumbs to the inference of the fantasy and winds up losing the warmth of his reality indicating how a kid can, in some cases, be lost in such envisioning.

Nonetheless, there is a warm consoling symbolism at the starting point of the last verse. This can be seen as a hallucination of the fantasy like the state of this world. The "warm slope" can be regarded as a consoling picture of the warm human world. In such a way, Yeats is introducing a differentiation between the human and faery world. The kid has been deceived into accepting the fantasy of this world as being precisely the same as the human world. Although he may see a lake, ocean, waterfall, stream, and pool as wonderful or charming, yet he does not comprehend that they are no home like his reality. Despite the fact that his reality may be brimmed with more sobbing than he can comprehend, it is his world.

In the last stanza, "you" changes to "he" which sounds more vile and evacuated, as the kid is presently far off and got in the faery world. It is very nearly ridiculing the folks as "he" indicates that the faeries do not even know his name; yet, it could likewise demonstrate how "he" speaks to numerous kids.

The ballad itself is a fantasy. The sublime lyricism and the charm of the solid and sentimental words make a great impact on the reader, which gives the sonnet a feeling of being something that is mysterious, antiquated, and diverse in its own specific ways. The ballad can be seen as just a solace for the folks as their tyke has vanished or even kicked the bucket – he has been attracted to a negative perspective of life which is “loaded with sobbing” which highlights the broken dreams of the kid and the "faeries" which have made a superior world to bait the youngster from his reality into a terrible illusion.