Introduction of the Poem:
‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ was written in 1890 and first published in The National Observer’. Innisfree is an island in Lough Gill, Country Sligo, where W. B. Yeats dreamed of living simple and peaceful life in the lap of Nature. When he was in his teens, he had enjoyed natural life in Sligo (Ireland). Memories of the beauty of nature and attraction of Sligo remained cherished in his heart. When he wrote this poem he was in London. He was standing on an actual London pavement when a jet of water in a chemist's shop set him dreaming of this island in a fit of home - sickness. The poem reveals the poet's desire to escape from the noisy, miserable, real life of the city to a peaceful, calm, ideal place amidst nature. He would have there peace and tranquility in Nature and live alone in the bee - loud glade. There he would enjoy peace throughout day and night.
Summary of the Poem:
The poet is fed up with his difficult, competitive and uneasy life in noisy London. He is also very home - sick, so he expresses his desire to leave the noisy London full of fever and fret, and go to the Lake Isle of Innisfree. The isle is situated in Lough Gill lake in his native country Sligo in Ireland, on an open, grassy spot in the island, he will erect himself a cottage of twigs and clay. He will also have nine rows of bean - plants before his cottage to keep evil spirits away. He will also set a beehive in a tree near the cottage.
Having made a cottage, grown nine bean - plants and set a bee – hive, the poet will live there peacefully and happily. The place is a kind of heaven for him. At night it is lighted by a faint light of the clouded moon and glow - worms. Here is peaceful atmosphere throughout day from the morning to the evening, only the silence or peace of the night is disturbed by the chirping of crickets. When the sun rises, the crickets stop chirping. Midnight is all glowing and at noon the whole place is filled with a purple light, the peace of the evening is disturbed for a short time by the fluttering wings of linnets.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
Occasion of the Poem:
The poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ is one of the famous lyrics in Yeats’ early poetry. It was written in London in 1890 when the poet was living there and trying hard to earn his living by his pen. He was a lover of peace. In his boyhood days he was highly influenced by the peaceful atmosphere of The Lake Isle of Innisfree, an island in Lough Gill, Country Sligo. The prose work, Walden or Life in the Woods, by an American writer Henry David Thoreau also inspired him to live in the Lake Isle of Innisfree. He was forced to live in London to become a great poet. His poverty and noisy atmosphere of London often made him homesick and restless. One evening a fountain in a shop window reminded him of the Lake. He felt an immediate urge to leave London and go to Innisfree the next morning. He came home and wrote the present lyric. It was first published in a magazine, The National Observer, and then in the poet's poetic volume ‘The Rose’ in 1893.
W. B. Yeats’ Remark about the Poem:
His own words about ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ are as follows: “I had still the ambition formed in Sligo in my teens of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet - street very homesick, I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake - water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem, Innisfree my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music. I had begun to loosen rhythm as an escape from rhetoric and from that emotion of the crowd that rhetoric brings, but I only understood vaguely and occasionally that I must for my special purpose use nothing but the common syntax. A couple of years later I would not have written that first line with its conventional archaism— “Arise and go”—nor the inversion in the last stanza.”
A Great Stride in Yeats’ Poetic Development:
‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ is his first lyric and a great stride forward in his poetic development. The poem can be called tranquility recollected in emotion. The poem beckons Yeats with its promise of some peace away from London's grey pavements. It embodies a whole range of emotions - for example, his love for Maud Gonne, his nationalism, and his homesickness. It also reflects his interest in new linguistic and rhythmic possibilities, such as compound adjectives, the abandonment of the caesura, and variation in the length of lines.
A Desire for Peace:
Yeats expresses a deep desire to find peace in the lap of nature in ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. He will go there, build a cottage of wattles and clay, have nine beans - rows and a beehive. He will enjoy the charms and beauties of nature, the music of waves, the songs of linnets and crickets, the brightness of night, the glow of the moon and a dim glow of noon. He writes:
“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of 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."
A Critic Remarks:
“The sheer beauty of the language - the ‘bee - loud glade’, ‘evening full of the linnet's wings’ conveys the intensity of his desire to get away from ‘the pavements grey’ — of the city of London.”
Autobiographical Element:
The poem is remarkable for the autobiographical essence. But the tone of the poem is little more than sentimental, and lacks the sense of suffering and purification through agony that is dominant in the Benzantium poems.
According to J. H. Fowler, “This lake island is doubtless somewhere in Ireland but he has distinguished its name …” A. C. Ward observes: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree effects compromise between concrete picturing and dreamlike imaging, the cabin of clay and wattle; the bean rows and the honey - bee; evening full of the linnet's wings; the lapping of lake water— These are actualities recalled by exile ... the infusion of personal feeling is powerful enough to make the image more substantial than a vague - dream.”
Poetic Diction:
The words and epithets evoke poetic passion in a reader's heart, the long vowel sounds and the haunting music produced by the humming of the bees, the flutter of the linnet's wings and murmur of the lake water give an enchanted atmosphere to the poem. “I shall have some peace there” suggests the poet's keen sensitiveness to the inadequacies of reality. The rhythmical structure is effective. The poem is free from metrical regularity. There is no rigid syllabic structure, the number of syllables to the lines ranges from eight to fifteen. The emotional tone of the poem is heightened by simple manner. The picturesque words and the rhythm convey a dream ecstasy and the Irish background gives an impression of reality.
Conclusion:
Few modern poems can have had so much artistry lavished upon them as ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. The poem is imbued with romanticism. The poem is remarkable for the studied simplicity of style and refinement. Its rhythmical felicity is noteworthy. Its clever interweaving of the short and long lines and its peculiar music are really remarkable. The phrases — ‘lake water lapping’ and ‘peace comes dropping slow’ give us the full picture of water sound and the actual movement of the peace descending from the sky to the earth. The poem with its gemlike phrases such as ‘the bee - loud glade’, ‘noon a purple glow’ and ‘the linnet's wings’ arrests the attention of the readers .
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