The Lake Isle of Innisfree Questions and Answers
by William Butler Yeats

Recently Answered Questions

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Yeats conveys a profound message to the people of the city in his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Discuss the message and its significance as relevant to the current situations in the world.
  The poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats is the daydream of a city-dweller for a quiet life on a remote island. He would build a cabin, plant beans, and keep bees. Instead of...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Describe the contrast between the city life and life at Innisfree in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
  The beautiful poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats describes a daydream that the poet has while living in the midst of a city. He envisions living in solitude and building a...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Describe the image of the isle that has been created in your mind.
  Yeats creates such peaceful imagery in this poem. It is calm, still, and serene. A little cabin sits isolated, surrounded by nature. I especially love the imagery of the early morning, when "peace...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What are the roadway and the pavement a symbol of in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?
  The roadway and the pavement in Yeats's poem can be understood in two ways when looking at the context of the entire work. In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," Yeats writes about a small cabin...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What desire is expressed by the persona in the first line?
  In the first line of the poem, the persona or speaker expresses a determination more than a desire. The speaker states, “I will arise and go.” The destination given is Innisfree, which the speaker...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Please point out the anaphora in the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
  In poetry, anaphora is typically defined as the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of lines. It is classified as a kind of refrain. In terms of grammar, anaphora is typically...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What words does the poet use to describe how calmness and tranquility will come to Inisfree?
  The speaker says that, on the lake isle of Innisfree, peace will come "dropping slow," "Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings." This suggests that the calm and...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What sounds does the speaker describe in the poem?
  In the first stanza, Yeats refers to "the bee-loud glade," mentioning without quite describing the sound of bees on the lake isle after a succession of visual images. Then, in the second stanza,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Which image from the first two stanzas best conveys a mood of serenity?
  To me, the most serene image in the first two stanzas of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats is the "[midnight] all a glimmer". The calm and peace of nighttime alone with the...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What does the poet hope to have at Innisfree?
  In the first stanza of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," the poet says that he hopes to have nine bean-rows and a hive for the honey-bee, so he can live alone in the bee-loud glade. Despite the noise...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Compare "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" to the poem "London" by William Blake.
  At first sight these two poems don't seem to have enough common elements to allow any real comparison. Blake's "London" is a stark description of urban sorrow. The speaker walks the streets and...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What thoughts and feelings about The Lake Isle of Innisfree are expressed?
  In William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” he speaks of the solitary contentment and “peace” he feels when he thinks of the small lake island. On the island, he is able to leave...

  3 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  When and where will the poet find peace for himself in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?
  The poem's speaker will find peace for himself on the isle (small island) of Innisfree, which is in the middle of a lake. He will build a small cabin there, where he will live alone, plant nine...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  "I hear it in the deep heart's core." What does this line from "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" show? Explain.
  What the speaker "hears" in his deep heart's core is the sound of the lake water lapping against the shores of the lake isle of Innisfree. This line shows—or suggests—that the isle home he thinks...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  How do you pronounce "Yeats" as in William Butler Yeats? Add a note on the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
  The poet William Butler Yeats's last name rhymes with hates. You can listen to Yeats pronounced on the youtube link cited below. William Butler Yeats is generally regarded as one of the finest...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Describe the Lake Isle of Innisfree in your own words.
  Even if the reader doesn't know that the Lake Isle of Innisfree is an uninhabited island that lies within a large lake in County Sligo, Ireland, he or she can easily imagine what it is like from...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," what are the simple things the poet wants to do in Innisfree?
  The poet wants to build a little cabin. He wants to grow a small garden and keep bees. He wants to live alone and listen to the quiet and the sounds of nature, especially the sound of the water....

  3 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  How will the speaker have peace at Innisfree?
  In the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats, an anonymous narrator relates what appears to be a recurrent daydream. He imagines living on the isle of Innisfree and longs for a...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Describe how the poet will live in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
  William Butler Yeats wrote the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" about a pleasant island he remembered from his youth. In the poem, the poet imagines leaving the city and going to live in nature on...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," what is the speaker seeking in the place he wants to go forever?
  In this poem, the speaker wishes to go to Innisfree to obtain the peace and solitary pleasures of life. This place is the setting where Yeats spent his childhood years. Now situated in the...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What is the meaning of "dropping veils of morning to where the cricket sings" from the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?
  To grasp the full comparison, you have to back up a line: And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings. So...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Why does "peace [come] dropping slow" in the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?
  One doesn't normally associate peace and action—be it "dropping" or anything else. Yet in this case, the line "peace comes dropping slow" indicates that, for the speaker, peace is not simply an...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What's the theme of "The Lake of Innisfree"？
  One of the best things about studying classic literature is that the themes found therein apply as much today as they did at the time of writing. So it is with Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree,"...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Why do you think the poet says he is going to have nine bean- rows and a hive?
  The speaker of the poem fantasizes about leading a life of quiet repose in the wilderness. At the time when Yeats wrote "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" he was heavily influenced by Thoreau's Walden,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Why does the speaker in the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" desire to spend his time alone in his cabin?
  In William Butler Yeats's retrospective poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” the speaker longs for a place to quiet his mind. The poem was written when Yeats was living in London, but his heart was...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What do you think is meant by the poem's words "deep heart's core"?
  In the poem 'The Lake Isle of Inisfree' by William Butler Yeats, the poet is feeling homesick for the landscape he loves in the west of Ireland. Although he came from an anglo-irish background he...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  How would you describe the particular appeal of this escapist poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree?" 
  In his autobiography, Yeats wrote of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree": I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree . . . and when walking...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Compare and contrast "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Wild Swans of Coole."
  These two poems by William Butler Yeats are perfect examples of his early tributes to his native country, Ireland, in which he reminisces about his childhood memories and subtly laments the loss of...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What  details in the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by W.B. Yeats suggest that it is timeless?
  W.B. Yeat’s beautiful poem, ”The Lake Isle of Innisfree, ” is based on an actual experience. When Yeats was a child, his father read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden to him. Yeats so loved Thoreau’s...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Where does the poet stand now? How it is different from the lake Isle of Innisfree?
  Yeats does not tell us specifically where he is standing at that moment. Our only clue comes in the second to last line of the poem, which reads "While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What is the relationship between the poems "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "The world is too much with us"?
  The quick answer to this question: Nature! "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by Yeats juxtaposes the place the poem is describing—an idyllic place immersed in nature—versus the reality of where the...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What kind of life does the poet William Butler Yeats imagine in his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?  
  In his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," Yeats imagines a peaceful, removed life on an island. He imagines constructing a simple cabin made of "clay and wattles" and planting beans and having a...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What do the poems "Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats and "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" by William Wordsworth have in common?
  Both “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (William Butler Yeats) and “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” (William Wordsworth) describe beautiful and peaceful scenes involving water. Yeats...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," what does the poet find so attractive about the Lake Isle of Innisfree?
  The thing that the poet finds so attractive about Lake Isle of Innisfree is its promise of peace: And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Why does the poet want to go Innisfree?
  Normally one needs to be careful not to attribute the words of a poem to the poet's own feelings because the poet could be writing in the voice of a "persona," a character whose feelings he or she...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Why did William Butler Yeats say, "I will arise and go now to Innisfree"?
  Innisfree is a little island in a lake near the town of Sligo, on the north west coast of Ireland. When Yeats was a boy, he spent his summers in Sligo and sometimes rowed out to the island. As an...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Comment on the use of imagery in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
  Let us remind ourselves that imagery is creating verbal pictures through the use of words that appeal to as many of the senses as possible to try and help us imagine the scene that the author or...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What type of midnight noon and evening does the speaker expect to experience?
  In this poem by W.B. Yeats, the speaker declares his intention to go to Innisfree and build for himself a "small cabin" from natural materials, "clay and wattles." It is clear that the speaker...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What are five traits/characteristics of the writing of William Butler Yeats, using "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" as an example?  
  William Butler Yeats is perhaps Ireland's most famous poet, and is indeed considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. His subject matter embraced a number of topics, including love,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What is "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" trying to convey?  
  Well, there are plenty of meanings that this beautiful and excellent poem could be argued to be trying to convey. People have variously argued that this poem is about the beauty of transcendent...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Why does Yeats use "my deep heart's core" in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?  -- it is the core that is deep and not the heart.
  When Yeats chooses to use “in the deep heart’s core” instead of “in the core of my heart,” the speaker is distancing the “peace” he feels from himself. This reinforces the idea that the peace found...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What is the hyperbole in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree?"  
  Hyperbole is not usually the first word one associates with "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," but if we understand hyperbole to mean not only exaggeration, but "claims [that are] not meant to be taken...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What does the speaker mean when he says "peace comes dropping slow..."?
  The speaker longs for the quiet solitude of nature. Currently, the speaker lives in an urban setting (in the second to last line of the poem). He has been dreaming of going to such a place and...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  In William Butler Yeats' poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," what does the poet feel while standing on the pavement?
  The speaker in Butler's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1892) is clearly in the midst of an urban environment as he thinks about Innisfree: While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What does '...and noon a purple glow' mean?  Why purple?
  Yeats is altering both midnight and noon into eerie images. "There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings." Here Yeats gives evening a...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  What is the meaning of the poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?
  This poem is about a man, overwhelmed with urban life, who dreams of going back to nature in order to find some peace. The man will build a small cabin there (line 2) and grow some beans (line 4)....

  2 Educator Answers

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  How can I analyze "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" poem for symbolism, theme, personification, and use of imagery?
  The cabin on the lake symbolizes the simple life, a life free of distraction and troubles. Symbolism is an object that has a meaning larger than itself. Just as the cabin is simple, “of clay and...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  How does the poem "The Lake of Innisfree" appeal to the senses?
  The poem appeals to the senses to help you appreciate the peaceful nature of the place described. In the beginning, the island is described and the speaker says he will build a house “of clay and...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Explain the line "lake water lapping with low sounds" from William Butler Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
  In William Butler Yeats' poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," the speaker is in the city, "stand[ing] on ... the pavements gray," but is imagining his favorite place, which he calls Innisfree. The...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
  Explain as fully as you can the contrast between the last four lines of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and the rest of the poem. You should consider not just what the lines mean but also the language used by the poet.
  In all three stanzas, the speaker begins with the claim that he "will" or "shall" go to Innisfree, but it is only in the third stanza that he shifts to the present tense. He says "I hear the lake...

  1 Educator Answer