The Stolen Child Lyrics

Come away human child to the water
Come away 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 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 the reddest stolen cherries

Come away human child to the water
Come away 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 further 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
Chasing frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep

Come away human child to the water
Come away 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

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 water
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

Note. For the purposes of the musical arrangement, the lyric phrasing of the chorus was altered in the Waterboys recorded version. The original chorus of the poem is : "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."

W.B.Yeats

On "Fisherman's Blues" and "Now And In Time To Be"