Among School Children

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1928

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Among School Children” follows an ottava rima form, a poetry type created and loved by Italian Renaissance poets and often used in epic and narrative poem stories. The ottava rima consists of several eight-line stanzas that use the rhyme scheme ABABABCC. Yeats uses this form to create eight small self-contained poems that fit together into a larger whole; each stanza explores a new idea or a new facet of the poem’s speaker—Yeats himself. This poetry form has been popular with poets such as John Keats and Percy Shelley.

Within this form the poet uses a loose iambic pentameter, which he returns to often in his work. However, there are several places where the meter deviates, most notably in the very first lines: “I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; / A kind old nun in a white hood replies;” (Lines 1-2). However, the rest of the first stanza falls into a more rigid iambic pentameter: “To study reading-books and history, / To cut and sew, be neat in everything” (Lines 4-5). Through the poem, the rigidity and fluidity of the meter reflects the thoughts and feelings of the speaker, creating a sense of controlled chaos.

Juxtaposition

The poem uses juxtaposition and contrast throughout to powerful effect, both thematically and at a more intimate level. The first stanza contrasts the children with the old man visiting them, as well as their expressions: the children look on in awe, while the old man smiles indulgently. The second stanza opens with the phrase “a Ledaean body” (Line 9), suggesting a great beauty and grace, though it quickly introduces harsher imagery in the “sinking fire” (Line 10) and the “harsh reproof” (Line 11). This contrast heightens the effect of each line—the beauty becomes even more ethereal, and the rest of the scene harder around her.

Later, in the seventh stanza, the poet uses contrast again when he discusses “nuns and mothers” (Line 49), and the way they each worship in their own way. By showing the reader how one woman worships marble, and one woman worships a different kind of image altogether, the poet draws a surprising parallel between what each woman is feeling. Throughout the poem in its entirety, juxtaposition and contrast emerges between old age and youth, and between hard work and reward.

Metaphor

“Among School Children” is laced with layers of metaphor. In the second stanza, Yeats opens with the image of a “Ledaean body” (Line 9), representing the mythological Helen of Troy, which in turn represents the very real woman that Yeats loved—a metaphor within a metaphor. The stanza closes with another metaphor, that of the “yolk and white of the one shell” (Line 16). Here he uses the two separate parts of an egg as a metaphor for his relationship with the woman, thought to be Maud Gonne, fitting together as naturally and symbiotically as an egg’s white and yolk. The third stanza returns to the metaphor of “daughters of the swan” (Line 20), alluding to the similarities his love may have had with the girls in front of him—the “paddlers” (Line 21), or the other, less beautiful waterfowl. This bird metaphor is carried through to the fourth stanza when the poet directs it towards himself and his “pretty plumage” (Line 30).

The fifth stanza uses light metaphor to talk about childbirth and age, referencing “a shape upon her lap” (Line 33) as the infant, and the “winters on its head” (Line 38) as a metaphor for both the white hairs the poet now wears, as well as the years that he has lived. In the next, he refers to nature as “a spume that plays” (Line 49) (via Plato), a wave against the sea. This suggests that while the wave is visible, there is an entire unseen world beneath its surface. In the eighth and final stanza, Yeats revisits the idea of the natural world as a metaphor for this one. He speaks of a chestnut tree in its various parts, and a dancer also made up of separate pieces. These are used as a metaphor for life and the relationship between artists and art.