What desire does the persona express in the first line of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?

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 says later is on the shore of a lake. From the title, we learn further that Innisfree is an island in a lake. The desire that accompanies the determination is slowly revealed through the poem. The speaker states that they “will live alone” in the cabin they build, and that by doing so, “I shall have some peace.” In the last stanza, the speaker repeats their intention to “arise and go” and then finally provides a powerful motivation for going to the island. When they are on a road or on the city’s “pavements gray,” the lake and island exert a pull on their heart: they hear “the lake water lapping . . . in the deep heart's core.”

What is the speaker seeking in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?

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 bustling, chaotic city, he wishes to escape his urban setting. He fantasizes about the new comforts he will create when he returns to this childhood place he craves. He will build a small cabin, grow beans, and indulge in the sights and sounds of nature. Here, surrounded by the sounds of the water of the lake and the songs of the crickets and bees, he will remain forever. The speaker's longings in this poem represent a common human desire to return to one's roots, and an individual's desire to find solace and comfort in the enduring tranquility which only nature can provide.

Why does the speaker in Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" desire peace?

There is little explanation of why Yeats is so hungry for peace in his famous poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Rather, Yeats spends most of the poem describing the pastoral beauty and idyllic peace of a quiet existence. However, one can guess that Yeats wants peace from the trials of urban existence. 

Written toward the end of the 19th century, "Innisfree" can be seen as a response to a rapidly changing world. Like the Romantics before him, Yeats appears dissatisfied with conventional existence and yearns to return to an idealized, pastoral lifestyle. Additionally, we can guess that the existence Yeats seeks to escape from is something of an urban, industrialized one. Take, for instance, the poem's final lines:

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. (10-12)