This week, I thought I’d reflect on a poem that’s always been close to my heart since reading it in school so many years ago. It’s a poem whose arisal always brings a question in tow: “where’s your Innisfree?” It’s one I’ve been enjoying this week again as I return home to my own little slice of the Lake Isle. It’s good when home has its own edge of Innisfree to it, though truly it is Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula and France’s Languedoc region that wrestle for this throne in my heart.
What is your Innisfree?
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. 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 grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.