The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Overview
People reading the poem 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' often wonder about the
existence
of such a place in Ireland.
There are many theories about whether such an idyllie island paradise actually
exists.
Some claim that it could possibly be near Sligo where Yeats lived as a child.
It was from that experience that he grew to love Ireland.
However, many literary critics believe that the island is purely imaginary. Perhaps it
was an island Yeats wished to escape to when overwhelmed by the sadness or
bitterness of life. (He is said to have suffered from unrequited love,
as Maude Gonne, never returned his love.)

Paraphrase
Stanza 1
I will get up and go to Innisfree. Once I get there, I will build a small cabin
using clay and wattles. I will also plant nine rows of beans and set up a hive
for honey bees. I will be all alone amongn the sound of the bees.

Stanza 2
I shall enjoy the peace which comes slowly like morning mist that
slowly fades away until it is night. then, the crickets will come out to sing.
At this beautiful lake isle, the midnight sky twinkles in the dark and the
high-noon is like a purple glow in the sky. In hte evening, I will also
see the flying brown and grey birds (linnets).

Stanza 3
I will get up and listen to the water lapping quietly by the shore. I will
stand and watch from the roadway or the grey pavements. I hope to
reflect and contemplate with wisdom and hope to gain an understanding
of humanity.

Themes
* Nature brings peace and harmony to Man.
Nature provides Man with scenic sights and sounds which pleases him
and enables him to live a peaceful, stress-free life.

* Man should live close to Nature. The poet himself wants to escape
to this peaceful and beautiful place and build his dream home there.

Moral Values 
* The world we live in today is polluted with noise and dirt. Like Yeats
(the poet), we yearn for a natural retreat away from our stress-filled lives.

* We must learn to appreciate the beauty of Nature. In the midst of Nature,

Man will be able to find peace and solitude. 
 Tone and Mood 
In this poem, the tone is peaceful, thoughtful, expectant and harmonious
in keeping with the poem's theme. The words that reflect this mood are
'...I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow'.

Structure and Style 

* The poem is written in three stanzas. Each stanza has four lines.
*The rhyme scheme in this poem is ABAB. This means that the last word in line 1
rhymes with the last word in line 3. Therefore,
Innisfree (stanza 1, line 1) rhymes with 'bee' (stanza 1, line 3).
Similarly, the last words in line 2 and 4 rhyme,
e.g. made  (stanza 1, line 2) rhymes with glade (stanza 1, line 4).

* In stanza 2, slow (line 1) rhymes with glow (line 3) and sings (line 2)

rhymes with wings (line 4).

* In stanza 3, day (lline 1) rhymes with grey (line 3) and shore (line 2)

rhymes with core (line 4).

* This rhyme scheme creates a sence of harmony. It reflects the peace,

serenity that the poet sees in the Lake Isle of Innisfree.

* In this poem, the poet uses a variety of literary devices to make his poem
interesting and vivid.
Imaginery
The poet creates pictures / images in the minds of the readers to stress
a particular point. This poem has strong visual (appeal to eyes) and
auditory (appeal to ears) imaginery.

A - Visual Imaginery (veils of the morning, midnight's all a glimmer,

noon a purple glow, evening full of the linnet's wings)

B - Auditory Imaginery (bee-loud glade, cricket sings, lake water lapping)

The images create a vivid picture of the place which gives a sense of inner
peace and harmony.

Metaphor
The poet uses this to compare two or more things without using the words
'like' or 'as', e.g. 'peace (evening) comes dropping slow', veils of the morning.

Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds, e.g. 'lake water lapping with low sounds.'

Repetition
Certain words, sounds and even stanzas are repeated in a poem which serves to
stress certain ideas, pictures / images, sounds or moods,
e.g. 'dropping slow, dropping, I will... now'.
 Speaker / Persona 
In this poem, the persona is the poet. He tells us about this beautiful and idyllic
lake isle that is situated in Innisfree. On the island, he is able to enjoy
the peace and harmony of nature.

Setting
* The physical setting is a peaceful Irish countryside.
Key words that reflect this are : cabin, wattles, glade, lapping.

* The setting also reveals the different times of the day.

Key words that suggest the setting :
morning - veils of the morning
day - nine bean rows, honey bee
evening - purple glow, cricket sings
night - midnight's all a glimmer

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939 )

Born – Ireland
Died – France 
Fell in love with Maud Gonne, an Irish Nationalist who faught
for social justive. His love was not returned. He remained  heartbroken
till he was 52 years old, the age when he finally got married.

Even though he was of English origin, he loved Ireland very much

and thought of himself as an Irishman. His father, John Butler Yeats,
was also an artist and encouraged him to write poetry. Being a patriotic Irishman,
he wrote many poems on the beauty of Ireland, its magix, folklore
and political scenario. Apart from that he wrote many poems
to Maud Gonne, hoping for her love in return.

Accomplishments :-

 Won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1923)

 Member of Irish Senate (1922 – 1928)
 Referred to as the greatest Irish poet

http://www.sabah.edu.my/csm07001/poem_lake_isle_innisfree_poet.html

Copyright © 2007. Latifah Yusof Embun. Sung Siew Secondary School. All Rights
Reserved.
Explication of William Butler Yeats"'" '"'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'"' 
I. Specific instruction/information about the poem 
A-C. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: 
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 5 
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 10 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core. 

D. Type of poem: lyric 

E. Closed form: quatrain 

II. Content of poem 

A. In William Butler Yeats"'" '"'The Lake Isle of Innisfree,'"' he talks about wanting
to go to a peaceful place. He goes there in his mind. He builds a cabin and plants
beans. He listens to the bees and lake. He wants to live peacefully by himself. He is
in the city and hears his heart yearning for an idea, peaceful place such as
Innisfree. 
B. Yeats"'" theme is about yearning for the idea place. The speaker in the poem is
wanting to get out of the city and go to some peaceful place. 
C. Yeats"'" words are simple. However, their meanings are more complex. He uses
figurative language. 
D. This poem is calm and relaxing. One does not physically go to Innisfree, but can
go in their mind. They can imagine being there. It helps to relax and escape the rush
of modern living. 

III. Technique in the poem 

A. Figurative language 
1. Metaphor- '"'And evening full of the linnet's wings,'"' (8). The sky is not literally
full of linnet"'"s wings. By reading more into it, one can understand that the 
speaker is meaning birds"'" wings. 
2. Synecdoche- '"'I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,'"' (1). He is not 
physically getting up and going, but going in his mind. 
B. Imagery used 
1. Visual imagery- '"'There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,'"' 
(7). Yeats brings out the colorful, beautiful sky at different parts of the day. 
This makes Innisfree seem more peaceful and calm. 
2. Auditory imagery- '"'I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore,'"' 
(10). The sound of water flowing is usually perceived as peaceful. It brings to 
mind the peaceful beauty of water flowing over rocks. This auditory imagery 
adds to the calm and peaceful tone of the poem. 
3. Auditory imagery- '"'And live alone in the bee-loud glade,'"' (4). Yeats appeals 
to the sense of hearing. One can imagine hearing the sound of bees and seeing 
them buzz around a field. 
C. Yeats"'" tone is peaceful and calm. He takes on the persona of a city man
yearning for peacefulness. By using '"'I,'"' the speaker varies with the reader. 
D. Yeats"'" uses a quatrain which follows the pattern of abab, cdcd, efef. Every
rhyme is a full rhyme. This keeps the poem flowing. He has three stanzas of four
lines each. The poem is written in hexameter. The last line in each stanza, however,
is written in tetrameter.

http://jollyroger.com/zz/yclassicpoetryd/WILLIAMBUTLERYEATShall/cas/76.html

Victorian literature was written in England during the "Victorian era" which was from 1832-1901.
Victorian literature mostly focused on the strict social, political, and sexual conservatism of the
time. Some famous Victorian authors are Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Charles Dickens, and
William Thackeray.

Modern age literature (modernism) was during the 1890's through the 1940's. The literature
focused on moving towards modern Western ideas, religion, social conventions, and morality.
Some famous modern age authors are William Faulkner, Scott Fizgerald, and Joseph Conrad.
So I suppose the main difference is that Victorian literature focused on the culture in which they
were already in while Modern age focused on the ideas of the West and the future.

Read
more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_the_victorian_and_modern_ag
e_literature#ixzz1DoYaHLOg
W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1865, the son of a well-known Irish
painter, John Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in County Sligo, where his parents
were raised, and in London. He returned to Dublin at the age of fifteen to continue his
education and study painting, but quickly discovered he preferred poetry. Born into the
Anglo-Irish landowning class, Yeats became involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement
against the cultural influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian period, which
sought to promote the spirit of Ireland's native heritage. Though Yeats never learned
Gaelic himself, his writing at the turn of the century drew extensively from sources in
Irish mythology and folklore. Also a potent influence on his poetry was the Irish
revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889, a woman equally famous for her
passionate nationalist politics and her beauty. Though she married another man in 1903
and grew apart from Yeats (and Yeats himself was eventually married to another woman,
Georgie Hyde Lees), she remained a powerful figure in his poetry.

Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite Irish
independence from England, his verse reflected a pessimism about the political situation
in his country and the rest of Europe, paralleling the increasing conservativism of his
American counterparts in London, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. His work after 1910 was
strongly influenced by Pound, becoming more modern in its concision and imagery, but
Yeats never abandoned his strict adherence to traditional verse forms. He had a life-long
interest in mysticism and the occult, which was off-putting to some readers, but he
remained uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy, and his poetry continued
to grow stronger as he grew older. Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922,
he is remembered as an important cultural leader, as a major playwright (he was one of
the founders of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin), and as one of the very greatest
poets—in any language—of the century. W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in
1923 and died in 1939 at the age of 73.

Copyright © 1997 - 2011 by Academy of American Poets. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/117

The Lake Isle of Inisfree

WB Yeats (1865 - 1939)

Relevant background

 WB Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin. His family was upper class.
 Yeats received classes in art and thus could paint a scene well with words.
 Despite dyslexia and early difficulty with learning the alphabet, he turned into the greatest Irish
Poet of the Twentieth Century.
 He spent some of his early life in London. That’s where he wrote The Lake Isle of Inisfree at the
age of 25. The Isle was a place he daydreamed about.
 He loved Sligo, his mother’s home place and the location for The Lake Isle of Inisfree.
 The Lake Isle of Inisfree is a poem which shows that Yeats was a bit of dreamer, like a lot of
poets. He liked to dream of a beautiful place like Inisfree.
 The poem also shows how simple use of language could achieve musical effects.

Summary
This is a poem by WB Yeats in which he dreams of escaping the busy streets of London. He remembers
Inisfree as a perfect little island that would supply all his needs. His memory tricks him into thinking it
had a beautiful summer climate all year round.

In the first stanza Yeats imagines building a tiny hut on the little island of Inisfree. He dreams of living
on beans and honey which he will cultivate himself. Obviously he is unrealistic. He also wants to get
away from people: ‘live alone’.

In the second stanza Yeats imagines finding harmony on the island:

‘And I shall have some peace there’.
He dreams further of living in a delightful climate there:
‘noon a purple glow’.
He also dreams of listening to songbirds at dusk:
‘evening full of the linnet's wings’.

In the third stanza the thought and action develops. Yeats states his decision to leave the ‘pavements
grey’ of London. He is obsessed with or crazed by the sound of lake water and has to leave the city.
Finally he admits that he has a deep need to live in a beautiful place encircled by the sound of water:
‘I hear it in the deep heart's core’.

Themes

The poet dreams of moving away from the city to live alone on an island:
‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree’.
Note how the repetition of ‘go’ emphasises his wish to travel away from the city.

The poet wishes to escape to a beautiful place with wonderful light and colours:
‘There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow’.
Note how the repeated ‘i’ and ‘o’ sounds make it seem like a musical place.

The poet celebrates the beauty of a private place on a country lake:

‘I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.’
Note how the repeated ‘l’ sound adds to the beauty of the situation.

Tones

Sometimes the tone is determined:

‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree’.
Note how the repetition of ‘go’ emphasises his wish to depart.

Sometimes the tone is dreamy:

‘And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made’.
The clay and wattles show that he is unrealistic about his comfort and therefore a dreamer.

Sometimes the tone is soft and warm [mellow]:

‘for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings’.
This image of peace pouring from the morning mist and lasting till dusk when the cricket sings is very
mellow. The repetition of ‘dropping’ makes it very mellow.

Sometimes the tone is bleak and sad:

‘the pavements grey’.
By placing ‘grey’ after ‘pavement’ Yeats is emphasising how much it depresses him. He reveals a
lonesome tone as he refers to the streets and pavements.
Imagery

The images are a mixture of poetic descriptions of a beautiful place and realistic or true to life images.
For example he describes the atmosphere well by imagining peace dropping from the morning sky:
‘for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings’.
Thus Yeats uses metaphors. The morning does not literally or really have ‘veils’. This is word that
suggests mists in the sky. Neither can ‘peace’ ‘drop’ in a physical sense. The word ‘dropping’ is therefore
another metaphor when used with ‘peace’.
In the second line Yeats gives us a more physical image of the little cabin made of prehistoric clay and
wattles. The ‘hive for the honeybee’ is a real image.
The image of the grey pavements of London streets is less pleasant but more real than many of the
other images.

Note how Yeats uses contrast especially between the colourful images of the island and the dull image of
the city. Overall the poem is based on two contrasting images: that of the city and the island.
The colours ‘purple’ and ‘grey’ show this contrast. The island is bright and musical while the city is
dreary. You can see this difference if you contrast ‘lake water lapping’ on the island to the ‘roadway’ in
London where there is no peace. Note the pleasant ‘l’ sound repeated in the Inisfree descriptions.

There is also a strong image of the poet’s memory of Inisfree. He claims to ‘hear it in the deep heart's
core’.
This is a metaphor because the ear does not really connect to the heart. It is a way of emphasising the
deep, spiritual feeling of the poet. The overall image is of memory. His memory gives him a desire to
return there again for its beauty.

The image of the ear listening to nature is repeated in five images throughout the poem:
‘bee-loud’, ‘cricket sings’, ‘linnets wings’, ‘water lapping’. Yeats also uses ‘I hear’ twice, which
emphasises the ear as a main image in this poem.

Sound effects

This poem in particular contains repetition for musical effect. This music enhances [meaning that it adds
to] the beauty of Inisfree.

Alliteration [the repetition of first letters]:

‘lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore’.
The ‘l’ and ‘s’ sounds here show alliteration and create music.
Note the 4 ‘l’ sounds also in this quote:
‘live alone in the bee-loud glade’
You can find more examples yourself.

Assonance [repetition of vowels]:
Note the ‘ea' and ‘ee’ sounds in ‘I hear it in the deep heart's core.’
These sounds reveal a tone or mood of longing in the poet.
Can you spot the long ‘o’ sounds in the second and third stanzas?

Rhyming [The words of the first and third lines rhyme and the words of the second and fourth lines
rhyme in each stanza]:
The end sounds in the first stanza are as follows:
‘ee’, ‘ade’, ‘ee’, ‘ade’.
This is a regular pattern and is found in all the stanzas.

Internal Rhyme [rhyming inside one line]:

‘go’ in the first line: ‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree’.
Can you find the internal rhyme in this example?
‘And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings’.

Did you also see in this quote the other unusual rhyme created by the repetition of ‘dropping’ in two
lines? That is called Cross Rhyme.
Rhythm:
The rhythm is soft, dreamy and hypnotic.
The repetition of ‘go’ in the first line, other internal rhymes, the cross rhyme, the end of line rhyming
pattern, the alliteration, and assonance all contribute to this rhythm.
The nine words of two syllables [like ‘glimmer’] in the second stanza increase the slow, dreamy
atmosphere. By contrast the words are more often of one-syllable in the first and third stanzas, apart
from about five words of two syllables in both. This creates a faster rhythm, which matches the poet’s
urgent desire to leave the ‘grey’ city.

 Copyright © 2008 Intel Corporation

http://www.skoool.ie/skoool/examcentre_sc.asp?id=1186