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The Lake Isle of Innisfree
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“The Stolen Child” by William Butler Yeats (1886)
This poem, written around the same time as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” borrows its imagery from Irish mythology and uses the area near Sligo as its setting. The poem begins, “Where dips the rocky highland / Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, / There lies a leafy island” (Lines 1-3). Most scholars believe that “Sleuth Wood” is a reference to “Slish Wood” next to Lough Gill. The point at “Rosses” (Line 15) and the waterfall of “Glen-Car” (Line 29) are also nearby. Based on an Irish legend, the poem is about fairies luring a child to depart the human world and come with them. The fairies’ refrain ends each stanza:
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand (Lines 9-12, 24-27, 38-41).
While this poem is more otherworldly than “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” it shares its location and the sentiment of desiring escape from trouble. It was published in The Irish Monthly and later collected in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889).
“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats (1892)
This poem, which was written for Maud Gonne in 1891, was published in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892). In it, the unspecified speaker asks the object of their affection to remember them after they’ve grown “old and grey and full of sleep” (Line 1). The speaker urges the beloved to read their words to remember “how many loved your moments of glad grace, / And loved your beauty with love false or true” (Lines 5-6). However, the speaker suggests that their love was truer. The poem’s last stanza suggests the beloved might regret rejecting the speaker, and upon re-reading the poem, might one day think “how Love fled” (Line 9). As in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” Yeats once again has his speaker use natural imagery to discuss his longing, as the speaker “pace[s] upon the mountains overhead / And [hides] his face amid a crowd of stars” (Lines 11-12). This suggests that this abandoned love was an epic one—which resides deep in the heart like Innisfree.
“In The Seven Woods” by William Butler Yeats (1903)
This title poem from Yeats’s collection, The Seven Woods, details a visit to Lady Gregory’s home at Coole Park, the tranquility of which had been interrupted by a large storm and excavations on nearby Tara Hill due someone believing the Ark of the Covenant was located there. This poem shows the speaker once again finding comfort in nature. When the speaker hears “the garden bees / Hum in the lime tree flowers” (Lines 2-3), they are able to “put away / The unavailing outcries and old bitterness / That empty the heart” (Lines 3-5). Some scholars speculate that this may be a reference to Maud Gonne’s recent marriage to John MacBride, but this is not directly referenced. The speaker does decide to ignore thoughts of politics and social unrest and trust that “Quiet” (Line 10) will return and that a “Great Archer, / […] awaits His hour to shoot” (Line 13), suggesting perhaps that while peace is not entirely present it will come.
Further Literary Resources
“Deep Heart’s Core Sound: A Discussion of William Butler Yeats’s ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’” hosted by Al Filreis and featuring Taije Silverman, John Timpane, and Max McKenna (2013)
This episode of Poem Talk, sponsored by the Kelly Writers’ House at Pennsylvania State University, features Filreis talking with McKenna, Silverman, and Timpane about Yeats’s famous poem. Timpane talks about themes of memory; Silverman concentrates on Yeats’s use of sound; and McKenna mentions how auditory memory is captured in Yeats’s imagery. They discuss the performative style of Yeats’s reading and McKenna describes it as a creation of an “other worldly Irish way of performing that harkens back to some long time ago.” The group discusses the sound in the poem, both in the words themselves and the auditory imagery along with longing, the concept of time, and Yeats’s age when he worked with the poem. Timpane notes that Yeats is implying, the journey “is deeper than going back to a place, this is something that’s woven into what a person is.” The talk is recorded for listening, but a transcript is also provided.
“In Ireland, Chasing the Wandering Soul of Yeats” by Russell Shorto (2015)
In this travel article for The New York Times, Shorto goes to County Sligo, Lough Gill, and the Lake Isle of Innisfree, an area called Yeats Country. Shorto describes the location, the poem, and Yeats’s biography in the article. The article also contains photographs of the locale, which Shorto notes is “the opposite of a tourist site. I could barely make my way out to the water to get a view, so thick was the shoreline with trees and brush.” Of the many islands, Innisfree doesn’t particularly stand out to Shorto as a place to live. However, he explains: “You realize, sitting there, identifying the sound of the lake water with the deep heart’s core, that the Yeats who wrote the poem [did] not actually intend to retreat from the world and move to this spot.” Instead, he suggests Yeats “is aware, at 23, of death and the inexorability of change. He is searching, trying to find his balance, his center. He knows he left it somewhere in his past, as we all have done. The poem is a mental exercise, a meditation.”
“Reveries over Childhood and Youth” by William Butler Yeats (1999)
This essay is contained in a collection of essays, Autobiographies, first published in 1965 by Scribner. Written in 1914, this essay recounts Yeats’s growing up, what Sligo meant to him, and the influence of his father and other family members. Living alone on Innisfree was an idea which had captured his imagination since his father read him Walden (85). Yeats tells the story of how as a young man he hoped to stay the night in Slish Wood, so he might be cured of “bodily desire” (85) and concentrate on simplicity. He also recounts a county legend connected with the island regarding a monster which guarded a tree that produced a fruit of the gods. A young man retrieves the fruit at his beloved’s request, and upon biting it he dies from “its powerful virtue” (85). His lover, discovering his demise, also eats the fruit and dies. Yeats remarks that he wasn’t sure if he “chose the island [of Innisfree] because of its beauty or the story’s sake” (85). This may tie the speaker’s disquiet in the subsequent poem with the idea of lost love.
Listen to Poem
These two audio files were recorded on October 4, 1932. They include Yeats reading the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” but also include his introduction to the reading, which describes the impetus to the poem’s creation. Here is a transcription of the introduction:
I am going to begin with a poem of mine called ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ because if you know anything about me you will expect me to begin with it. It is the only poem of mine which is very widely known. When I was a young lad in the town of Sligo, I read Thoreau’s essays and wanted to live in a hut on an island in Lough Gill called Innisfree, which means ‘Heather Island.’ I wrote the poem in London when I was about twenty-three. One day in The Strand I heard a little tinkle of water and saw in a shop window a little jet of water balancing a ball on the top. It was an advertisement, I think, for [of?] cooling drinks. But it set me thinking of Sligo and lake water. I think there is only one obscurity in the poem. I speak of noon as a ’purple glow.’ I must have meant by that the reflection of heather in the water.
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By William Butler Yeats
