The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Ten

NOTE: This content is from my blog, Bareback Alchemy. If links here aren’t working, please try there: http://melissastuddard.blogspot.com/2012/05/mnemosyne-weekly-poem-ten.html

W. B. Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Photo by Kenneth Allen

This week, thanks to the recommendation of Robert Craven, author of Get Lenin, we’ll be taking a poetic journey to “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” courtesy of William Butler Yeats. Yeats composed the poem in 1888, and it was first published in 1890 in the National Observer. Click here if you want to have your mind blown by an amazing audio recording.

As well, feel free to leave remarks about the poems at Bareback Alchemy. I love hearing what you think! Here’s last week’s posting, if you want to leave comments on Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer “: The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Nine. Also, if you’re new to the blog, please check out the first Mnemosyne Post. And please keep suggesting titles! I always learn the most from the ones I would have never thought to select myself.

Have a great week, everyone. May your hearts and minds find peace in the “bee-loud glade!”

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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.