The Unappeasable Host

A mother fears the faery host that calls her child away.

The poem sets two cradles side by side. The Danaan children, the faery children, laugh in "cradles of wrought gold", knowing they will ride the North when the great bird flies. The speaker, a mother, kisses her wailing child and hears "the narrow graves" calling them both. Then comes a litany of "Desolate winds" crying over the sea, hovering in the West, beating at the doors of Heaven and Hell. The last lines admit something dangerous: to her shaken heart, the unappeasable faery host is lovelier than the candles at Mary's feet.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 4The faery children

   "The Danaan children" laugh in golden cradles and clap their hands, for they will "ride the North when the ger-eagle flies". Their future is wild and splendid, but the bird's "heavy whitening wings" and "a heart fallen cold" suggest something inhuman in it.

2. Lines 5 to 6The mortal child

   The contrast is stark. The speaker kisses "my wailing child" and presses it close, but hears "the narrow graves calling my child and me". Mortal children cry, and mortal lives end in the grave.

3. Lines 7 to 10Desolate winds

   Three lines open with "Desolate winds", building a chant. The winds cry over "the wandering sea", hover "in the flaming West" and beat on the doors of Heaven and Hell, blowing "many a whimpering ghost". The host's restless power reaches everywhere.

4. Lines 11 to 12The confession

   She speaks to her own "heart the winds have shaken" and admits the truth: "the unappeasable host" is "comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet". The faery world is more beautiful to her than Christian devotion, and that beauty is a danger to her and her child.

Themes

Context

The poem appeared in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) under the title "A Cradle Song", and took its present title from 1906. It is a different poem from "A Cradle Song" in The Rose. The "Danaan children" are the children of the Tuatha De Danann, the old gods of Ireland, who in folk memory became the faeries, the Sidhe who fill this book.

Form

Twelve long lines of six beats, rhymed in folded quatrains, ABBA ("gold", "eyes", "flies", "cold"). The repeated "Desolate winds" at the start of lines 7 to 9 gives the middle the sound of a keening chant, while the long lines let each image unroll slowly, like wind across the sea.