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Willie Nelson | |
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Poem of the Month |
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Poem for June 2007
• "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by WB Yeats
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Friday,
1 June, 2007
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
"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 honeybee,
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." (1892)
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
W.B. Yeats talks about his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
“I am going to begin with a poem of mine called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” because if you know anything about me, you will expect me to begin with it. It is the only poem of mine which is very widely known.
"When I was a young lad in the town of Sligo I read Thoreau’s essay and wanted to live in a hut on an island in Lough Gill called Innisfree which means ‘Heather Island’.
"I wrote the poem in London when I was about twenty-three: one day in The Strand, I heard a little tinkle of water and saw in a shop window a little jet of water balancing a ball on top – it was an advertisement, I think, for cooling drinks – but it set me thinking of Sligo and lake water.
"I think there is only one obscurity in the poem – I speak of noon as a ‘purple glow’. I must have meant by that the reflection of heather in the water.”
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” was Yeats best known poem. He made a recording of it for the BBC in 1939, You can listen to it if you follow our link (you need to have Real Player installed).
Potted Biography
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish Protestant, poet, playwright, politician and revolutionary who founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin Theatre and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. A life long interest in mysticism and the occult inspired much of his poetry but he also took a keen interest in politics and served as a senator in the government after Irish independence. He died in France in 1939. He was buried at his request in Drumcliffe C. Sligo.
In 'Under Ben Buiben,' one of his last poems, he had written: " No marble, no conventional phrase; On limestone quarried near the spot / By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman; pass by!"
The Naked Reader 2007
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