Friday, April 6, 2018

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

For many years now, this exquisite poem has gotten mingled in my mind with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in "The Quiet Man," which is set in Innisfree. The poem echoes so much of the best of the place I am now living, where I do indeed hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore -- or will, once the lake unfreezes, probably sometime in May this year:


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.

-W.B. Yeats

No comments:

Post a Comment