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,	5
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;	10
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.”