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National Poetry Month: William Butler Yeats

By Glynn Young 2 Comments

The career of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) spanned two centuries, and he became one of the foremost figures of English literature. He was a major force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was a co-founder of the famed Abbey Theater in Dublin. Active in politics, drama and literature, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. Born in Dublin, he died in France and is buried there.

This poem is taken from Early Poems, published in 1993 as a Dover Thrift Edition. Much of his early poetry was influenced by Irish folklore and myth.

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 pavement’s gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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Glynn Young
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Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
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Filed Under: article, poetry, W. B. Yeats

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Comments

  1. L.L. Barkat says

    April 25, 2011 at 7:44 pm

    I love those early poems. “The Lost Child” is a favorite. 🙂

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Re-Inventing the Ode | says:
    March 19, 2014 at 8:00 am

    […] each passage, the poet had to make the ode itself move. The boldness of Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” a 20th-century incarnation of the ancient ode, provides the reader with three distinct […]

    Reply

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