Lake Isle of Innisfree

The "Lake Isle of Innisfree" is a poem written by William Butler Yeats in 1888. The poem was published first in the National Observer in 1890 and reprinted in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics in 1892. This is a poem by W.B.Yeats in which he dreams of escaping the busy streets of London. He remembers Innisfree as a perfect little island that would supply all his needs:


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.

Lowry makes reference to the poem in his first novel Ultramarine in which he compares the peace of the lake to the the streets of Dairen; "Not like the Lake Isle of Innisfree, I thought, as we passed an hotel, the Oriental, blazing with light.