William Butler Yeats wrote “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” one of his most famous and widely-anthologized works, in 1888. The poem gets its title from a very small, uninhabited island that sits in Lough Gill, a lake in Yeats’s home county of Sligo, Ireland. The speaker of this pastoral poem longs to build a simple life on Innisfree, finding peace through communion with nature. However, it becomes clear that ties to city life prevent the speaker from realizing this dream. The young poet’s fixation on questions of spirituality and Irish identity is felt in this poem, which also contains the sort of archaic language that he would later abandon and decry. Following an ABAB rhyme scheme and loosely iambic meter, the poem’s seemingly neat, concise structure belies its complex networks of rhythm and sound, which are responsible for much of its visceral impact and enduring popularity.
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The Full Text of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
1I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
2And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
3Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
4And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
5And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
6Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
7There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
8And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
9I will arise and go now, for always night and day
10I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
11While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
12I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The Full Text of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
1I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
2And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
3Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
4And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
5And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
6Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
7There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
8And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
9I will arise and go now, for always night and day
10I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
11While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
12I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Summary
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Themes
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Nature and Spirituality
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Labor and Fulfillment
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
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Line 1
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
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Lines 2-4
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. -
Lines 5-6
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; -
Lines 7-8
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings. -
Lines 9-10
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; -
Lines 11-12
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Symbols
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Innisfree
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The Cabin
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Light
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Roads and Pavements
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- I will arise and go
- Arise
- Innisfree
- Wattles
- Bean-Rows
- Bee-Loud
- Glade
- Shall
- Dropping
- Veils
- Linnet
- Lapping
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Speaker
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“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
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More “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Resources
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External Resources
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Yeats reads "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" — Listen to a recording of Yeats reading the poem, exaggerating its rhythm.
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David Holdeman on Yeats — A short clip of a Yeats scholar explaining his take on the poem.
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Profile of William Butler Yeats — A detailed overview of Yeats's life and work from the Poetry Foundation.
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Can Humans Control the Natural World? — A module on urbanization, industrialization, and humans’ relationship to nature in the 19th century, including a discussion of contemporary literature.
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Online Exhibition: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats — A digital version of a wide-ranging exhibition on Yeats at The National Library of Ireland, which houses the world's largest collection of his manuscripts.
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A Brief History of the Irish Nationalist Movement — A summary of Irish Nationalism and related movements and conflicts in the late 19th century.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Butler Yeats
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