A DOLL in the doll-maker's house
Looks at the cradle and bawls:
"That is an insult to us.'
But the oldest of all the dolls,
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although
There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither, to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.'
Hearing him groan and stretch
The doll-maker's wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,
And crouched by the arm of his chair,
She murmurs into his ear,
Head upon shoulder leant:
"My dear, my dear, O dear.
It was an accident.'
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From guest Erin Blankenship (contact)
This poem is Yeats' response to his upbringing - an absent father and an emotionally abusive mother. As the oldest child WB was never good enough to replace his dead younger brother, and mommy Susan made poor WB feel terrible. Also, the "dolls" are analogous to the poems WB creates. Both the poet and the doll maker have far more fondness for their artistic "children" — their poems and dolls — then they do their biological offspring. -
they're talking about a new "doll," in this case a real baby, and the problem of birth control (accidents happen).
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