April is National Poetry Month - Friday Poem from W. B. Yeats

We’re kicking off our National Poetry Month observance with a Friday poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). This poem—one of Yeats’ early poems (published 1893)—was inspired by the ideas of American Transcendentalism, especially Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden.

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 honeybee,
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 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.

From The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1956) by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)