William Butler Yeats, 1888

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 grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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When I was in 6th grade, this was one of the poems we were assigned to not only memorize, but illustrate. I went to a highschool/college collab choir concert recently, and the high school choir had a song based on this poem, which I enjoyed due to the rush of nostalgia.

I like how descriptive of peace and solitude the poem is. The mix of future and present tense stands out to me; I also like how the rhythm sort of swells in the middle stanza with longer lines before calming down again with the repetition in the third stanza. I find it interesting that while he’s describing solitude, he’s not describing silence, not with the “bee-loud glade”; but there is the quietness of being away from the hustle and bustle of other people.

In my head, this poem is always read in a guy’s deeper voice, not unlike Morgan Freeman, which has a very calming effect. When I was a kid, I wanted to go live in the woods like the kid in My Side of the Mountain, and this poem evokes some of that same feeling in me. It’s calming, but also has a spark of adventure in it – an adventure of one’s own, perhaps.

Source: The Poetry Foundation