The Lake Isle of Innisfree
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I WILL arise and go now, and go to
Innisfree,
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And a small cabin build there, of
clay and wattles made;
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Nine bean rows will I have there,
a hive for the honey bee,
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And
live alone in the bee-loud glade.
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And I shall have some peace there,
for peace comes dropping slow,
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Dropping from the veils of the morning
to where the cricket sings;
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There midnight's all a glimmer,
and noon a purple glow,
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And
evening full of the linnet's wings.
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I will arise and go now, for
always night and day
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I hear lake water lapping with low
sounds by the shore;
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While I stand on the roadway, or
on the pavements gray,
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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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