Analysis of The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By William Butler 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.

The poem is written in three stanzas and three movements.  The first line starts with a sense of resignation.  The narrator is tired of their present surroundings I will arise and go now.   The tempo conveys a stern but ardent wish to go to Innisfree.

The second line begins the manifestation of his yearning and his dream, how it would play out.   Here there's an expression of a simple desire, a small cabin made of modest materials.  

The third line addresses how the narrator would subsist on Innisfree, which would apparently be honey and beans.  The sincerity of the wish is made evident through the exacting detail in which he makes it plain that he wants nine bean rows.  

The fourth line reveals that the yearning for Innisfree is in part a wish for solitude.  To live amongst the birds and the bees.  In this line the reference to bees is expressed.   .The next stanza will make reference to birds through the depiction of the linnet's wings.

The beginning of the second stanza deepens the reflection for solitude, elaborating that it's actually a yearning for peace.   The narration is almost self evident in this respect, as the second half of the line emphasizes that peace comes dropping slow.  As the cadence of the poem builds, one feels one is dropping more deeply into what Innisfree would be like.  At first there was just the wish for Innisfree.  Then it's revealed as a desire for solitude.  Then this desire for solitude is revealed in truth as a wish for peace.  Yeats will begin elaborating on what this peace would be like in vivid imagery.

 

The depiction of what Innisfree would be like begins earnestly enough in the morning.  Yeats will go on to depict the highlights of beauty in the natural surroundings and time of days there, much the same way Impressionist painters of his time depicted light in different times of the day in their landscapes.  The veils of the morning here is a metynomical phrase for the morning mist, from which the peace of the day begins.  

The glimmer of midnight would be the stars in that Isle far from the city, and the purple noon would be an embellishment of the sheer vibrancy of the day.  The poem helps invoke a dreamlike quality of extended time through the a-chronological order in which the events of the days there take place.  It begins with morning, moves to midnight, and back to the afternoon again.  This provides almost a time-lapsed quality to the depiction of Innisfree.  The third line reinforces cadence through both glimmer and glow, which are alliterative repetitions throughout the line reinforcing the quality of the light at Innisfree. 

The last line depicts the aforementioned reference to birds in Linnet's wings.  Here Yeats comes back to the sounds of Innisfree he first summoned through the sound of the crickets.  Here the sounds of Innisfree are so subtle as to include the sounds of a birds wings, emphasizing how peaceful a place it is.

The beginning of the third stanza marks a shift in topic, bringing the reader back to the present and the city.  Here the narrator sits and thinks of Innisfree night and day.  The symmetry in references to the times of day at Innisfree is palpable here.  Where the day's and nights of Innisfree are painted with extravagance, no such beauty exists here in the nights and days of the city.  

The ebb of lake water at Innisfree brings the narration back to the dream.  With subtle sounds that are almost inaudible calling the reader back to the past depictions of Innisfree. 

The narration cements the symmetry of the split between where the narrator is, and where he dreams by finally invoking the external environment of the city.  Here the pavement is made to contrast from the beauty and vividness of Innisfree by coloring it gray.  Despite the external circumstances the Lake Isle of Innisfree lives on in the heart of the narrator.  It's echoing sound resounding in the depths of his heart.