The Lake Isle of Innisfree

The machinery is creaking back into gear as we engage with New York’s second wave of COVID.  This winter, perhaps more than any other, we'll need to find quick pathways to inner peace.  William Butler Yeats fashioned such a pathway in his 1888 poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree. 

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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.