‘Among School Children’ by W.B Yeats was published in 1928 in the collection ‘The Tower’. Being among school children, Yeats confronts the problem of human frailty, by reflecting on the impact and the worth of his life. The poem is a first person narrative, with a conversational tone. Throughout he compares Maud Gonne’s current appearance to her physical appearance in her youth, this is where he realises how time effects the physical being. This poem has roman numerals which number each stanza – highlighting formality.
The poem begins by Yeats walking “through the long schoolroom”, which metaphorically could reflect the school of life. He then uses the verb “questioning;” to highlight that he is questioning are lessons really relevant to life? However, amongst youth itself, Yeats notices his age and therefore perceives himself as a “sixty-year-old smiling public man”. He desires to know whether his education is similar to the children, who now learn in the “best modern way”. While he questions whether lessons that are being taught are really relevant to life he learns that they “learn to cipher and to sing, to study reading-books and histories”. This is where Yeats understands that life’s true lessons are not from the classroom as learning to “be neat in everything” is ironic and unrealistic.
Whilst observing the innocent children he begins to visualise imagines of the “Ledaean body”. He envisions this “trivial event that changed some childish day to tragedy” and also strategically uses line eleven for the first alteration in meter which is parallel to the change in Leda’s life from innocence to knowledge. Yeats realises through this example that these children, like Leda, will soon be stripped of their innocence and purity. From this event, Leda gives birth to Helen of Troy who is thought of as the most beautiful woman on earth. Yeats then makes a comparison between Helen of Troy and Maud Gonne. He pictures them both as being together just like the “yolk and white of the one shell.”
Throughout the third stanza Yeats has finished envisioning the two women together and therefore searches through the children wondering whether he can see a likeness to Gonne where he states “Wonder is she stood so at that age.” He then moves on to describe Gonne’s beauty “even the daughters of the swan can share something of every paddler’s heritage.” He slips deeper and deeper into his imagination, so deep that “she stands before me as a living child.” The thought of Gonne’s purity and innocence hypnotizes Yeats. The only way Yeats can express the beauty is to express it poetically hence the song-like rhyme scheme of the stanza.
In the fourth stanza he understands that his portrayal of Gonne is not a reality and therefore “her present image floats into the mind.” He compares her cheeks to the wind. The image of wind has a double meaning, as the brevity of the wind symbolizes the brevity of life. Yeats comes to realise that he too, like Gonne, is ageing when he writes “had a pretty plumage once”. When he wants to hide his sudden realisation of morality he uses a metaphoric mask of an “old scarecrow” which allows Yeats to conceal his true feelings and thoughts.
In the fifth stanza there is an odd number of feet in line thirty-three, Yeats makes the fundamental shift in the poem noticeable which therefore changes from personal to universal. Yeats envisions a “youthful mother” and questions whether a mother would believe that the pains of childbirth were worth the trouble when the child grows older. Here, Yeats is asking the most fundamental of questions – what is the value of life? By stating that the child has lived “sixty winters” and not years highlights a gloomy winter image which further suggests suffering. The final line of this stanza refers to the mother’s uncertainty about her child’s future.
Throughout the sixth stanza, Yeats looks to the great men of the past for answers to his questions. Firstly, he looks into Plato’s Cave Allegory, with the “ghostly paradigm of things” which shows how Plato thought life was a shadow of reality. He then shows the idiocy of Aristotle’s work saying he has been playing “upon the bottom of a king of kings.” He does the same for Pythagoras’s work and then comes to realise that these men were nothing more than “old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.” As a result of his realisation, Yeats realises that although these men have produced lasting works, they themselves cannot be lasting.
The seventh stanza analyses the issue of love and expectation. Yeats uses the example of a mother and a nun to highlight the different types of love – one a mothers and the other religious. Both types of love have their objects/figures to worship. However, like a nun eventually gets the feeling of disappointment with God the mother will feel the same with the child.
Penultimately, in the final verse Yeats realises it is better to view life as a whole instead of viewing life in parts, like “the leaf, the blossom, or the bole.” He uses the final rhetorical question “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” to highlight that it is impossible to separate the two like life and death – which could link to himself and Gonne, or even Gonne and her child self.
Ultimately, the children throughout this poem are seen as poignant. The poem incorprets elements of myth and symbolism (Nuns, Leda..) combined with personal thoughts and memories (Gonne, her child self, life as a whole). He compares wisdom and knowledge and realises they’re different. Through the themes of change, ageing, mythology and reflection Yeats realises that no matter who the man and irrespective of his deeds, death is in fact inevitable.
The Room of Requirement. 