Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Lake Isle of Inisfree #2



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 gray,

      I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats



When I read this poem  it evokes all my associations with the Delaware River, childhood, family, and that primal awareness of the world as somehow sacramental. When I read it I am once fishing in a 
boat with my sons when they were younger; or with my father, 
when I myself was young.

Speaking of my father, it so happens that he died on this day, 
August 21, in 1981. I was with him, and few moments before 
he died, he roused himself from a deep coma and cried out,
 “Jonathan! The boatman!”

And now, when I read of “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore,” I am once again in a boat with him, and he is rowing while my sister and I fish, lines trailing out behind.

“I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”


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