UNDERGRADUATE 1ST YEAR SUBJECT: English Language & Literature TOPIC: The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats Duration: 23:52 min The Lake Isle of Innisfree Module 1 Introduction to the Poem
The "Lake Isle of Innisfree" is a poem written by William Butler Yeats in 1888.
It is one of his first great poems, and one of his most enduring. The poem was first
published in the National Observer in 1890. The poem, taken from his second
collection, The Rose, is an example of his early lyric style. Innisfree, whose name
means "heather island" in Gaelic, is an island off the coast of Ireland of intense
natural beauty. The island is in Lough Gill located in County Sligo, which is where
Yeats's mother's family came from, and which he identified as the part of Ireland
and the world closest to his heart. This is where Yeats dreamed of living alone in
search of wisdom. When he was in his teens, he had enjoyed natural life in Sligo
(Ireland). Memories of the scenic beauty and attraction of Sligo still remained
cherished in his heart. He was prompted to write the poem in London where he felt
exiled from the rural beauty he captures so brilliantly in the poem. Hence this
poem reveals the poet’s desire of escape from the fever and fret of the miserable
real life to a peaceful, tranquil and ideal place. He would go to the island of
Innisfree and build a small cabin. In the idea of building a home there and living as
a hermit, Yeats was influenced by American transcendentalists such as Thoreau.
The poet, like Thoreau, expresses a deep desire to seek peace and tranquility in
nature. He wrote in a letter: "My father read to me some passage out of Walden,
and I planned to live some day in a cottage on a little island called Innisfree."
Further, he wrote in his autobiographies:
“I had still the ambition formed in Sligo in my teens of living in imitation of
Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet
Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shopwindow which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake
water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree, my first lyric with
anything in its rhythm of my own music. I had begun to loosen rhythm as an
escape from rhetoric and from that emotion of the crowd that rhetoric brings, but I
only understood vaguely and occasionally that I must for my special purpose use
nothing but the common syntax. A couple of years later I would not have written
that first line with its conventional archaism ‘arise and go’ – nor the inversion in
the last stanza.”
Module 2 Background of the Poem
The poet is lying buried under and entangled in the clutches of a mad city life. It
has finally become such unbearable and suffocating to him that, if it continues to
go on so, he will arise and go to Innisfree never to return. Standing on the street, he
dreams of the beautiful and quiet Lake Isle of Innisfree and about the secluded and
self-sufficient life it would be possible for him to live there. In fact, when Yeats
was a child, his father had read to him from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and
Yeats described his inspiration for the poem by saying that while he was a
teenager, he wished to imitate Thoreau by living on Innisfree, an uninhabited
island in Lough Gill. In his youth, Yeats would visit the land at Lough Gill at
night, often accompanied by his cousin Henry Middleton. On one occasion, they
went out onto the lake at night on a yacht to observe birds and to listen to stories
by the crew. The trips that Yeats took from the streets of Sligo to the remote areas
around the lake set up for him the contrasting images of the city and nature that
appear in the poem's text. He suggests that, in London, he was often homesick for
Ireland, he would walk down Fleet Street and long for the seclusion of a pastoral
setting such as the isle. The sound of water coming from a fountain in a shop
window reminded Yeats of the lake that he had previously seen, and it is this
inspiration that Yeats credits for the creation of the poem.
Module 3 About the Poet
W B Yeats is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Born in Dublin,
Ireland, in 1865, William Butler Yeats was 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.
Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite Irish
independence from England, his verse reflected pessimism about the political
situation in his country and the rest of Europe. 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, and 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.
Module 4 Meaning of the poem
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.
The poem is a twelve-line poem divided into three quatrains and an example of
Yeasts’ earlier lyric poems. Throughout the three short quatrains the poem
explores the speaker’s longing for the peace and tranquility of Innisfree while
residing in an urban setting. The speaker in this poem yearns to return to the island
of Innisfree because of the peace and quiet it affords. He can escape the noise of
the city and be lulled by the "lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore." On
this small island, he can return to nature by growing beans and having bee hives,
by enjoying the "purple glow" of noon, the sounds of birds' wings, and, of course,
the bees. He can even build a cabin and stay on the island much as Thoreau, the
American Transcendalist, lived on Walden Pond.
The first stanza says that W.B. Yeats wishes to retire to the island of Innisfree,
which is located Lough Hill, Ireland, in search of further wisdom. He decides that
with no further ado, he must leave for the island of Innisfree and live in the
countryside cabin that he planned to build out of clay and wattles constructed in
the framework of interwoven sticks and twigs. Yeats preference to have a nine
bean rows within the sphere of his dwelling can be related to the fact that all
through his life he showed a strong commitment to things that are mystical and
supernatural and nine is the number that is believed to have a mystical association.
A huge hive for the honey bees in the cabin’s yard is company enough for him to
live alone in the open glade in the middle of the forest of the island of Innisfree,
with the high buzzing sounds of the busy bees.
And in the second stanza we see Yeats’ strong belief that, once settled in Innisfree,
he shall acquire a great measure of peace which comes down from Heaven just like
the dew that falls on the ground in the evening and stays there throughout the night
blending with the singing of the cricket, till late morning. Then they disappear
altogether with the lifting of the morning mist just like a veil that is lifted from the
face of the bride. The glimmering darkness of midnight and the purple Color of the
late afternoon set the scene for the evening with large flocks of linnets flying to
and fro, and, in and around the cabin.
Finally in the third stanza, Yeats feels the urgent need to go immediately to the
island of Innisfree, for eternally, day and night, he will hear the lake water lapping
softly on the shores of the island. If he places himself anywhere in the island; on
the roadside or the distant pavement; he will continue to hear it deep till the very
core of his heart.
Module 5 Structure and Style
W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet whose poems are acclaimed much for their musical
content. The Lake Isle of Innisfree also was born from an exquisite, pastoral tune.
The poem, written largely in hexameters, has a tranquil rhythm, something Yeats
emphasizes in his reading. This is somewhat at odds with more contemporary
vocal styles which favor a more conversational tone, but Yeats' quavering
incantation has a unique power of its own. It has six stresses in each line, in a
loosely iambic pattern. The last line of each four-line stanza shortens the line to
tetrameter, with only four stresses: “And live alone in the bee-loud glade.” Each of
the three stanzas has the same ABAB rhyme scheme. Formally, this poem is
somewhat unusual for Yeats: he rarely worked with hexameter, and every rhyme
in the poem is a full rhyme; there is no sign of the half-rhymes Yeats often prefers
in his later work. The whole poem is filled with natural metaphors and images that
immerse the reader in a dream from where he/she is finally going to be suddenly
awakened.
The style of the poem can also be discussed thus:
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
Theme
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.
Imaginary (veils of the morning, noon a purple glow, bee-loud glade, cricket sings)
Metaphor – peace comes dropping slow, midnight’s all a glimmer
Alliteration – lake water lapping
Module 6 Critical Appreciation
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by Yeats talks essentially about nature and the ideal of
life that he wanted at a certain point of his life. Yeats shows a desire of going
alone and free, from the very first line that we read “I will arise and go now…”
This will of going alone reflects the problems of the society that the world has ever
had and that we still have. All these problems make society think about an ideal
place (in contrast to reality) to live or an ideal place only to look at, and this is
what is reflected in Yeats’ poem.
The poem can be called tranquility recollected in emotion. The Lake Isle of
Innisfree beckons Yeats with its promise of some peace away from London’s grey
pavements. Yeats expresses a deep desire to seek peace and tranquility. The
tranquil, hypnotic hexameters recreate the rhythmic pulse of the tide. The simple
imagery of the quiet life the speaker longs to lead, as he enumerates each of its
qualities, lulls the reader into his idyllic fantasy, until the penultimate line jolts the
speaker—and the reader—back into the reality of his drab urban existence: “While
I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey.” This poem has always been a
sensation among the poetry-reading public. Anyone walking through crowded city
streets subjecting him to vehicle fumes, dust and noise and the irritation of rubbing
elbows with others will wish to go to some place he knows where things are in the
opposite. All will have one such place in his mind. The quiet and placid Lake Isle
of Innisfree has become the universal symbol that comes into any poetry reader’s
mind. Yeats immortalized the place of his choice through this poem.
The colors depicted and the sounds heard are those aspects that add more to the
beauty of the poem. The grey pavement seems to suggest the dullness he feels in
the city, and the purple glow of Innisfree just suggests the beauty of the isle he
loves. The bee-loud glade, the crickets singing, the sound of linnets' wings, the
sound of peace dropping slow only reiterates that it’s just a lovely poem of
longing. One can go to Innisfree any time, as long as the material world is put in
its place and yearn to be in close relationship with nature.