The Lake Isle of Innisfree

In his introduction to a reading of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” on October 4, 1932, Yeats notes that the impetus for the poem came from seeing a fountain used in a window advertisement, “in London when I was about twenty-three […] it set me thinking of Sligo and lake water” (“W.B. Yeats Reads The Lake Isle of Innisfree”). Sligo was Yeats’s boyhood home in Ireland and Innisfree was an uninhabited island located about five miles from there.

Initially, the poem seems to begin with the speaker embracing their agency to leave their current life. They note they “will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree” (Line 1). This emphasis on “will” (Line 1) suggests the speaker may move freely and indeed, easily make their way to Innisfree. Ideally, the speaker pictures a home in this natural area, which they value. However, the poignancy of the poem rests in its last lines which explain the reality of the speaker’s existence within an urban environment instead. The speaker populates a “roadway, or [is] on the pavements grey” (Line 11). This informs the reader that the escape to Innisfree is in fact imagined rather than a realistic relocation.