William Butler Yeats: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

William Butler Yeats, William Butler Yeats poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, Primal/Tribal/Shamanic poetry

by William Butler Yeats
(1865 - 1939) Timeline

Original Language
English

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.

-- from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, by William Butler Yeats

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/ Photo by Joe Shlabotnik /

Themes

Awakening

Dawn

Honey

Sound

Water

Recommended Books

	Adventures in the Deeps of the Mind: Th Cuchulain Cycle of W. B. Yeats, by Barton R. Friedman
	Autobiography of W. B. Yeats, by W. B. Yeats
	Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and the Occult, by Leon Surette
	Blackwell Critical Biographies #12: The Life of W. B. Yeats, by Terence Brown
	A Book of Irish Verse, by William Butler Yeats

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Something for us today by that seeker/sage/bard/mage Yeats.

I love the rhythms and rhyme of this poem. To really appreciate it, you need to say it aloud and let it loll about on the tongue.

Yeats paints with his words, running them together like brushstrokes in watercolor.

...the bee-loud glade.

...and peace comes dropping slow.

And in the beauty of this rustic scene, we discover stillness, something of the eternal in the sound of the water lapping at the shore. Listening well, we discover the one who listens. We discover "the deep heart's core."

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