William Butler Yeats

First I want to say that I felt very sorry for Yeats when he was continuously turned down by the woman he had fallen in love with Maud Gonne. I believe that a lot of his poems were written with an inspiration from Maud.

Another thing I wanted to point out was how Yeats wrote in his autobiography “I remember little of childhood but its pain.” (1114). When I read this I felt the pain of his childhood. I believe childhood is supposed to be a wonderful time of a person’s life. It is ultimately a prize in life and even though I have said several times over the years ‘I cannot wait until I am older!’ I regret that my childhood is coming to an end. Thankfully I was able to experience a delightful childhood and have memories of the good times and not just of the painful times.

Yeats’ poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree was one of my favorites. While I feel I still had trouble understanding (mainly because every time I thought I was finally getting the big picture the poem would take a twist and lose me completely) the imagery provided in this poem drew me in. I loved all the description available in this poem and my favorite part of the poem was the second stanza which states

“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.” (1117).

This stanza makes me want to visit this lake because it honestly does sound so beautiful and peaceful. I imagine that one could escape from everything here and while reading this poem I felt that I had escaped to a far away place.

One vibe that I get from this poem is that the speaker is not actually at the lake but is thinking about the lake in order to escape from the world he is living in. I get this from the last stanza which reads

“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.” (1117).

It seems that he is always thinking of the lake at the Isle of Innisfree and even when he is on the roadway of the world he is living in, he longs to be at the lake. It can always be found in the deep core of his heart.