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Home  »  Responsibilities and Other Poems  »  30. The Dolls

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). Responsibilities and Other Poems. 1916.

30. The Dolls

II

A DOLL in the doll-maker’s house

Looks at the cradle and balls:

‘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, oh dear,

It was an accident.’