World literature
One of the clearest and most significant associations with the world of Ireland is the poetry written by William Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. The poem Irish in origin by its form is the ordinary visualization of the peaceful life of the author which characterizes not writer`s feeling, but his life and carrier as well.
The poem was written by William Butler Yeats in London when walking down the street he passed some shops with murmuring small waterfall in the shop windows to attract the buyers. He suddenly remembered the lake near Sligo, the place where he liked to go in his solitary walks, island in the lake where he wished to settle down. These boyish dreams along with the hassles and worries of the city, in which he plunged headlong rushed into the heart of a novice poet struggling to make inroads in literature. So, he wrote this poem – a poem-recollection, a pledge of allegiance beginning it with the biblical words: I will arise and go now . In this poem Yates stresses the suddenness of those surging memories, which gave impetus to writing the poem. As if the man slept and woke up suddenly. Feeling unrighteousness, irregularity of his life (like the prodigal son in the parable), he realized that he was lost there on the grey pavement, captured by huge, gloomy city, and then he seemed to shake off that heavy sleep. That`s how the first lines of the poem appeared:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Yeats wants to build a cabin made of clay and the wattles to dwell in. He thinks of his garden with “nine rows for growing beans”, and he wants to have bee hives as well. Then he will be able to live peacefully by himself in the 'bee-loud glade.' Yeats amazingly conveys the readers that he is not supposed to hear the hums of civilization, but the sounds of nature.
The poem is twelve-lined and is parted into three quatrains. The first quatrain tells us about the demands of the body, that is food and roof above the head; the next narrates about the necessities of the soul (he considers it to be peace); and in the final quatrain memories meet with the existing world (grey and busy streets of London).
Written not in accordance to the standards of those times the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” shows Yeats` inner voice, his dreams and passion for peace, the life of the country where he grew up and the place which stays in his heart forever.
