"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree"

An incantation of freedom

Plate 88, Discomedusae by Ernst Haeckel, 1904

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

by William Butler Yeats

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 gray,  
      I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” was first published in The National Observer in Britain in 1890. It was next published as a broadside by William Butler Yeats’ sister, Elizabeth, at her Cuala Press.

Here is Yeats, himself, reading the poem like a grave incantation.

Creative Invitation

As a girl, I’d found a copy of this calligraphed broadside at a venerable used bookstore on Magazine St. in New Orleans, one with towering, leaning stacks of books and winding catacombs of rooms. Cats ruled the place. It smelled of pipe tobacco and disintegrating petticoats, old newspapers and friendly arguments.

I love the hypnotic, driven, rhythmic sounds of the poem. I love the idea that at any moment, we might get up and go somewhere else, build a cabin, grow beans and collect honey, live away from roadways. The poem is both a plaintive plea and a determined declaration. Most of all, it creates the feeling of the place he describes. It creates the feeling of being outside of the daily world, listening to peace dropping slow, to crickets, to linnets.

What places did you, or do you, love so much? What places can you bring to mind by their sounds, its colors? Where do you feel this sense of refuge? When is the last time you’ve been there?