{
 "id": "w-b-yeats/among-school-children",
 "title": "Among School Children",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "W. B. Yeats",
 "poet_slug": "w-b-yeats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Tower",
 "book_slug": "the-tower",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "The Tower",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1928,
  "venue": "The Tower (1928)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
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  ]
 },
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  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-21"
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I walk through the long schoolroom questioning,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A kind old nun in a white hood replies;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The children learn to cipher and to sing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To study reading-books and history,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To cut and sew, be neat in everything",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the best modern way⁠—the children’s eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In momentary wonder stare upon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sixty year old smiling public man.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I dream of a Ledaean body, bent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Above a sinking fire, a tale that she",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That changed some childish day to tragedy⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the yolk and white of the one shell.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And thinking of that fit of grief or rage",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I look upon one child or t’other there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wonder if she stood so at that age⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For even daughters of the swan can share",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something of every paddler’s heritage⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And had that colour upon cheek or hair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thereupon my heart is driven wild:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She stands before me as a living child.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Her present image floats in to the mind⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did quattrocento finger fashion it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And took a mass of shadows for its meat?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I though never of Ledaean kind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had pretty plumage once⁠—enough of that,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Better to smile on all that smile, and show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Honey of generation had betrayed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As recollection or the drug decide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would think her son, did she but see that shape",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With sixty or more winters on its head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A compensation for the pang of his birth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Plato thought nature but a spume that plays",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Solider Aristotle played the taws",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the bottom of a king of kings;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fingered upon a fiddle stick or strings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What a star sang and careless Muses heard:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Both nuns and mothers worship images,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But those the candles light are not as those",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That animate a mother’s reveries,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But keep a marble or a bronze repose.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet they too break hearts⁠—O Presences",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That passion, piety or affection knows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that all heavenly glory symbolise⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Labour is blossoming or dancing where",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor beauty born out of its own despair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How can we know the dancer from the dance?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}