The Poem
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” a twelve-line poem divided into three quatrains, is a study in contrasts. The most obvious contrast is between two places: one rural (identified in the title and described throughout much of the poem), the other (alluded to only in the second-to-last line)—by implication—urban.
Innisfree is a small island at the eastern end of Lough Gill in County Sligo, Ireland. William Butler Yeats spent part of nearly every year in Sligo while growing up; he often walked out from Sligo town to Lough Gill. His father having read to him from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), he daydreamed (as he says in The Trembling of the Veil, 1922, incorporated into his Autobiography, 1965) of living “a life of lonely austerityin imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree.” In 1890, while living in London, he was “walking through Fleet Street very homesick [when] I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop-windowand began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.”
Yeats imagines escaping from the city to the solitude and peace of a pastoral retreat, there to live a simple life, close to nature. The first stanza states his intention and provides a prospectus for the home he will make for himself, specifying the rustic construction for his cabin and exactly how many rows of beans he will plant. The second stanza, more fancifully imagining what living there will be like, pauses over images that he associates with four different times of day: morning, midnight, noon, and evening. The third stanza reiterates his intention and for the first time suggests what motivates it: the (implied) urban setting and Yeats’s nostalgia for Sligo.
The contrast between the matter-of-fact first and last stanzas and the fanciful middle stanza reinforces the contrast between the quotidian city, with its “grey” pavements, and the idealized country. The opening stanza employs no figurative language; the only figurative language in the closing stanza is the sound of waves “lapping” in “the deep heart’s core.” Otherwise, the language in these stanzas is straightforward and literal, emotionally neutral.
The second stanza, on the other hand, is brimming with metaphors and other figures: “peace comes dropping slow,” as if it were dew; the morning wears “veils”; the cricket “sings”; the “evening [is] full of the linnet’s wings.” Language, imagination, and emotion all rise to a rapturous brief climax in this middle stanza before subsiding. The opening words of stanza 3, echoing the opening words of the poem, cue a return to the everyday world.
Historical Context
In the 1880s, when Yeats penned “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” Ireland was amidst economic and political chaos, and Yeats, along with his family, faced financial difficulties. Thus, it is no wonder that the sound of a fountain on a busy London street would evoke memories of the lapping waters of Lough Gill and reignite his childhood dream of living on Innisfree, free from the pressures of modern urban life.
During the nineteenth century, Ireland was predominantly an agricultural nation, but many farms were controlled by British landlords. For nearly three centuries, Irish farmers had fought for more control over their livelihoods. In the 1880s, they began to see some success. The leading figure in Irish land reform and the push for Home Rule (i.e., a subordinate parliament for Ireland) was Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), often called the “uncrowned King of Ireland.” Parnell, a wealthy Protestant landlord who sympathized with the Irish plight, was elected to Parliament in 1875 and became the head of the Irish Party.
With the support of Parnell and Catholic labor activist Michael Davitt (1846–1906), liberal British Prime Minister Gladstone enacted the Land Act of 1881. This act guaranteed tenant farmers fair rent, protection against eviction, and the right to sell or transfer their leases. Parliament also passed a “franchise act,” adding approximately 500,000 new voters, most of whom were middle-class and poor Catholics who supported Parnell. However, a Home Rule Bill was defeated in the Commons in 1886. In 1890, Parnell was disgraced when a court revealed he had been “living in sin” with the wife of William Henry O’Shea, a fellow politician and member of the Irish Party.
A second Home Rule Bill was introduced in 1893 but was defeated again, this time in the House of Lords. After this setback, many Irish nationalists, including Yeats, began to focus on enhancing Ireland’s cultural and artistic contributions. For instance, Douglas Hyde, who later became president of the Irish Free State, founded the Gaelic League in 1893. The League led efforts to revive pride in Irish ethnic and national identity, supporting various initiatives to promote Gaelic language and culture. The “Irish Ireland” movement also included organizations like The Gaelic Athletic Association, which aimed to promote traditional Irish sports such as hurling and football.
Shortly after the Yeats family relocated to London in 1887, Yeats became homesick. Their new home, a dark and squalid row house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Kensington, was depressing for the entire family. Yeats often dreamt of returning to Ireland. However, he eventually found some comfort in London’s literary scene. Just a mile from the Yeats’s house lived William Morris, a poet and the father of the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris’s large house and stables served as a gathering place for writers and artists. Morris befriended Yeats, and the poet contributed to Morris’s socialist magazine, Commonweal.
Yeats returned to Ireland in mid-August 1887 and remained there until the end of the year. During this period, he composed his first significant poem, “The Wanderings of Oisin,” which was inspired by Irish folklore. When Yeats went back to London in 1888, he strengthened his connections with London’s literary figures, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. A few years later, together with Ernest Rhys, Yeats established the Rhymers Club, aimed at supporting emerging poets. Through this group, Yeats became engaged with the Irish National Literary Society, with whom he had intermittent disagreements over the following years. Yeats was also involved with Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society and later with the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn during this time. Blavatsky, an occultist and a prominent figure in England and Ireland in the late nineteenth century, authored the highly popular book The Occult World, which captivated many artists and writers. Blavatsky conducted séances, practiced magic, and encouraged her followers to seek “union with the absolute.” Her focus on the spiritual dimensions of life resonated with Yeats’s own anti-materialist beliefs.
Forms and Devices
The poem’s rhyme scheme is regular; all of its rhymes are exact. In each stanza, the first three lines are in hexameter, the last line in tetrameter. In these respects, the poem is perfectly regular. Its meter is iambic, though only the last line of the poem precisely conforms to the iambic pattern. In each of the other eleven lines, Yeats introduces an extra unstressed syllable just after the midpoint, and the extra syllable is in each case a one-syllable word: “now” in line 1; “there” in lines 2, 3, and 5; and so forth. Virtually all of these words could be deleted without altering the meaning of the poem. Their purpose, clearly, is to contribute not to the poem’s meaning but to its sound and its tempo.
Yeats called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” “my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music. I had begun to loosen rhythm as an escape from rhetoric.” The added syllables in lines 1 through 11 contribute to this loosening of rhythm (line 3 adds still another syllable; line 6 adds two more syllables); so, too, does Yeats’s occasional relaxation of and variation from the basic iambic pattern. The loosening of rhythm prevented the poem’s meter from being too mechanical. Absolutely regular cadence produces a monotonous, singsong effect (an aspect of what Yeats called “rhetoric”); and Yeats’s “own music” was not timed by a metronome.
If “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” has something of Yeats’s “own music” in it, it is not—he later realized—fully in his own voice. When he wrote the poem, he was young, and, as he recalled, “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 of the last stanza.”
“Arise and go” (in line 9 as well as line 1) echoes the parable of the homesick Prodigal Son: “I will arise and go to my father” (Luke 15:18). Alexander Norman Jeffares points out that line 9 also echoes Mark 5:5: “And always, night and day, he was in the mountains” (A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1968). Such scriptural sonorities, added to the Thoreauvian quality of the first stanza’s humble images and the self-consciously “poetic” diction of the second stanza (“the veils of the morning” for fog and dew; “all a glimmer”), render the poem more literary, more “conventional” than a more mature Yeats would prefer.
Literary Style
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” features an abab rhyme scheme throughout its three quatrains. A quatrain is a stanza consisting of four lines, which may or may not have a specific line length. The poem also prominently employs alliteration and assonance, both of which enhance its musical quality and rhythm.
A stanza with a pattern of rhymes is known as a “rhyme scheme.” In “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” the abab rhyme scheme is used, meaning the end of the first line rhymes with the third line, and the end of the second line rhymes with the fourth line. This pattern is consistent across all three quatrains in the poem.
The poem uses “alliteration” and “assonance” to highlight its sound and mood. Alliteration involves the repetition of specific consonants to emphasize certain words or phrases. For example, observe the repetition of the consonants ‘l’ and ‘s’ in this line:
“I hear lake water lapping with the low sounds by the shore.” Reading this line aloud, one can hear the emphasis on “lapping,” “low,” and “shore.”
Assonance, on the other hand, is the repetition of vowel sounds attached to different consonants. Consider the repetition of the vowels ‘i’ and ‘o’ in this line:
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.”
Although assonance is subtler than rhyme or alliteration, it serves a similar purpose by connecting significant words or phrases within the poem.
Compare and Contrast
• 1880s: Unionists and Catholics are engaged in a fierce struggle over Ireland's sovereignty, resulting in numerous fatalities during riots.
Today: Despite advancements in negotiations, violence persists between Unionists and Catholics in Northern Ireland, leading to many casualties on both sides.
• 1880s: Occultism and magic gain significant popularity in England and Ireland, with Yeats himself joining several groups, such as the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn.
Today: The western world is witnessing a resurgence of interest in occultism and various magical practices. The Order of the Golden Dawn continues to exist and now maintains its own website.
• 1880s: The Celtic Revival emerges as a movement opposing the cultural dominance of English rule in Ireland, aiming to celebrate and promote Ireland's native heritage.
Today: Irish Americans travel to Ireland in large numbers to connect with their ancestral roots and cultural heritage.
Media Adaptations
• Harper Audio has released an audiocassette as part of their Caedmon Treasury of Poets, featuring poets reading their own works. This includes e. e. cummings, W. H. Auden, and Yeats reading “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” The recording lasts 155 minutes.
• Yeats recites “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “Song of the Old Mother” on the 1996 album In Their Own Voices, produced by Rhino Word Beat.
• Judy Collins performs “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” on her 1971 album Judy Collins: Living, with music composed by Hamilton Camp.
• John Aschenbrenner’s 1998 song cycle To an Isle in the Water features musical adaptations of Yeats’s poems, including “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” This album is published by Isle Enterprises.
• The video The Poetry of William Butler Yeats includes readings of Yeats’s poems by actors Stephanie Beacham, Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Minnie Driver, and others, along with discussions about his life.
• The Yeats Society of New York offers extensive information about the poet and links to other related websites. Visit them online at http://www.yeatssociety.org/yeatsny.html.
• In 1953, Audio-Forum released an audiocassette titled W. B. Yeats, featuring poet Stephen Spender reading Yeats’s poems. This tape is available for purchase from Jeffrey Norton Publishers, located at 96 Broad St., Guilford, CT 06437.
• The 1965 video Yeats Country pairs Yeats’s poetry with scenes of the Irish landscapes he wrote about. It is distributed by the International Film Bureau.
• Insight Video offers the documentary Yeats Remembered, a biographical film that includes period photographs and interviews with Yeats and his family. It can be purchased from Insight Media, 2162 Broadway, NY, NY 10024.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Ellmann, Richard, Yeats: The Man and the Masks, Norton, 1978.
Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, edited by James Strachey, Avon, 1983.
Leavis, F. R., “The Situation at the End of the War,” in New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary Situation, AMS Press Inc., 1978, pp. 27–74.
Merritt, Henry, “Rising and Going: The ‘Nature’ of Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree,’ ” in Journal of the English Association, Vol. 47, No. 188, Summer, 1998.
Thoreau, Henry David, Walden: An Annotated Edition, edited by Walter Harding, Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
Tindall, William York, W. B. Yeats, Columbia University Press, 1966, p. 31.
Wilson, Edmund, “W. B. Yeats,” in Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930, Charles Scribner’s, 1931, pp. 26–63.
Yeats, W. B., The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, Collier, 1967.
Further Reading
Alldritt, Keith, W. B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu, Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1997. This accessible study examines how Yeats meticulously crafted his public persona as a poet, nationalist, and literary activist. Alldritt delves into how Yeats’s social surroundings influenced his identity.
Graves, Robert, The Common Asphodel: Collected Essays on Poetry, 1922–1949, Hamilton, 1949, pp. 186–88. Graves’s critique of Yeats’s poem stands out as one of the most severe assessments ever written about it.
Jeffares, Norman A., W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988. This is Jeffares’s second biography of Yeats, following his first, which appeared just a decade after the poet’s death. In this work, Jeffares traces the various stages of Yeats’s career, recounting the story of his tumultuous personal and public lives.
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