The Lake Isle of Innisfree

BY  WI LL IA M BUT LE R YE AT S
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,
Dropping from the veils of the morning 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;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

Glossary and comment

Innisfree: Derived from the Irish ‘Inis Fraoch’ – Island of Heather. The ‘free’ in the name
has nothing to do with freedom.
Wattles – Wooden poles, intertwined with thin branches to form a wall or roof.
Glimmer – flicker of light (here used to mean the twinkle of stars).
Linnet – a small song bird, once commonly kept as a cage bird because of its
beautiful singing.
Glade: clearing; open space.

Background
Yeats wrote this poem in 1888 when he was a young man, living in London. He was
lonely
and homesick for Ireland at the time. Looking in a shop window, he saw a toy
fountain and
the sound of the water reminded him of lake water. Inspired by this, he wrote ‘The
Lake Isle
of Innisfree’.
Summary and analysis
Stanza One
The poem opens very formally with the words ‘I will arise and go now, and go to
Innisfree.’ It
has been pointed out that these words echo those of the prodigal son in the Bible
when he
says, ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ These biblical overtones reinforce the idea of
Innisfree
being an almost holy place and bring to mind the prodigal son's sense of relief when
he
resolved to leave his chaotic, unhappy life and return to his childhood home – a place
of
serenity and simplicity.
The poet goes on to describe the life he will lead on the island. He will be completely
selfsufficient,
having ‘nine bean rows’ and ‘a hive for the honey-bee’. The poet's vision is of a
romantic, idyllic, timeless way of life. Yeats imagines living in peace and solitude; he
says he
will ‘live alone in the bee-loud glade.’ The only sounds will be of nature. It seems that
Yeats is
rejecting the hustle and bustle of the modern world. The details in the poem give it a
timeless
quality; there is no hint of the modern world in Yeats' vision of the island. The only
mention
of modernity comes in the last stanza when Yeats refers to the ‘pavements grey’.
Stanza Two
In this stanza, Yeats becomes so involved with the idea of this peaceful paradise that
the
future tense is abandoned and he uses the present tense instead. It is almost as if, by
thinking and writing about Innisfree, he imagines himself there at that moment. He
tells us
that ‘peace comes dropping slow,’ and ‘midnight's all a glimmer’. He moves through
each
stage of the day, bringing his vision to life for us with his vivid descriptions and
beautiful
imagery. The description of the day’s rhythm makes us feel that this is a never-ending cycle
of sensual pleasure. In the morning, the mist is like veils thrown over the lake; at
noon, the
purple heather – which gives the island its name - blazes under the sun; the evening is
full of
the whirr of the linnet's wings (the linnet is a small songbird) and at night, the stars
fill the
sky: ‘midnight's all a glimmer’. The sounds in this stanza are soft and slow, creating a
sense
of peace and calm.
I find it interesting that Yeats chose to imagine the sound of the linnet’s wings rather than
the birdsong itself. The linnet is, after all, known for its beautiful song. However, on
reflection, the image Yeats has chosen conjures up a place that is so quiet that even
the whirr
of this tiny birds’ wings can be heard.
Stanza Three
Yeats brings us back to the opening lines in this stanza, beginning again with the
words ‘I will
arise and go’. The solemnity is reinforced and emphasised by this repetition, as is the
strength of his longing. The alliteration and assonance in the line, ‘I hear lake water
lapping
with low sounds by the shore;’ emphasise the tranquillity of the scene Yeats is
describing.
The broad vowels in this line slow the movement of the poem; it is virtually
impossible to
read it aloud at a fast pace. This is appropriate for a poem centred on ideas of
tranquillity
and escape from the sordid, chaotic city life. In contrast to this timeless, magical,
colourful
island, we are reminded of Yeats' reality at the time of writing: ‘While I stand on the
roadway, or on the pavements grey’. The colourless grey of the pavements seems
dreary and
depressing and we can empathise with Yeats' yearning for the lake isle of Innisfree, a
yearning he feels in ‘the deep heart's core.’ The last line is monosyllabic, which drives
home
the simple strength of the message.
This poem is in the Romantic tradition in that Yeats favours the pastoral over the
urban and
sees the world of nature in an idealistic way. It is reminiscent of the much longer ‘Tintern
Abbey’ by William Wordsworth in that both poems centre on revisiting a place which they
consider to be the epitome of natural perfection and a place where a poet may – in
peace and
solitude – reflect on life. You should bear this in mind when reading ‘Sailing to Byzantium’
and ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in that Yeats’ opinion and approach have altered considerably
in those later poems.
Themes
The poet's discontent, which leads him to imagine this perfect place.
A longing to go back to nature and live a self-sufficient life.
The search for peace, wisdom and truth.
W. B. Yeats has been in every respect an enduring imaginary presence in world poetry generally1 and
in each of Ireland’s poetic generations particularly. Yeats boldly invests poetry with a capacity to shape
people by stirring their whole nature.’ Few modern writers have had careers as long, varied, and
complex as W. B. Yeats. Born in 1865, he produced works that arguably belong to each of three major
literary historical periods or traditions: the Romantic, the Victorian, and the Modernist.

His life and work revolved around a few central preoccupations and themes: the Ireland of his day, the
occult, and the power of art to work in and change the world.

His early work often combines all these elements: nationalism, the occult, love, and contemporary
avant-garde poetry. The Yeats of the early work also drew on the world of Irish myth and folklore to
meditate in verse on the incompatibility of the natural and supernatural worlds. Critics sometimes label
his early poems escapist, but this is somewhat misleading. The early work is full of speakers who yearn
to escape from the everyday. But the escapism is nearly always qualified in some way.

First, of all writers, he must be one of the most elaborately intertextual.

His work abounds in cross-references and, because of his
compulsive revising of earlier pieces, the reader without a variorum
edition may sometimes assume that early works anticipate very late
works in a most remarkable manner. And, of course, sometimes an
unrevised piece, in a turn of phrase or an image, does re-emerge in
very different surroundings.

Yeats is considered one of the key twentieth-century English-language poets. He was

a Symbolist poet, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career.
He chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they
suggest abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of
symbols[97] is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other,
perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities. [98]
Unlike the modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the
traditional forms

W. B. Yeats

Few modern writers have had careers as long, varied, and complex as W. B. Yeats. Born in 1865, he
produced works that arguably belong to each of three major literary historical periods or traditions: the
Romantic, the Victorian, and the Modernist. His thought was profoundly dialectical; for nearly every
truth he made or found, he also embraced a counter-truth: a proposition that contradicted the first truth,
was equally true, and did not negate it. He repeatedly remade himself as a writer, as a public figure,
even as a person. And yet his life and work revolved around a few central preoccupations and themes:
the Ireland of his day, the occult, sexual love, and the power of art to work in and change the world.

His early work often combines all these elements: nationalism, the occult, love, and contemporary
avant-garde poetry.

Yeats was a forceful proponent and theorist of the Irish Literary Revival, even though, taken together,
the early prose works suggest a changing struggle for definition as often as they demonstrate the
articulation of a steady set of principles. The early poems proclaim Yeats’s
engagement with Ireland and Irish culture in various ways too