Yeats’s “Lake Isle of Innisfree”: Images of Dark Desires

The purpose of W.B. Yeats’s oft anthologized poems, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” is not – as commonly accepted – to espouse the virtues of a Modernistic type of literal escapism, but rather, paradoxically, the poem is an argument for the implementation of the use of imagination for the purpose of attaining the kind of peace Yeats refers to and desires. A simple reading of the poem often allows the reader to think generally of it as an expression of a wistful, longing type of nostalgia on the poet’s part, but a New Historical reading allows the possibility of implications that carry significant dark psychological overtones.

The poem’s speaker, possibly and presumably Yeats himself, begins by announcing he intends to “arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.” There he will “have some peace” while living a reclusive life. He reiterates once more that he intends to “arise” and go because in “his deep heart’s care” he hears the lake water lapping. Thomas L. Byrd, Jr. suggests that as the poem is grounded in reality (in that Innisfree is a real island), it is representative of an escape from the modern industrial world and that the purpose of this retreat from materialism lies in the hope of man living a simple unified existence (54). Obviously written in imitation of Thoreau and his ideals, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is said to have been inspired while Yeats was in London, homesick for his traditional Irish countryside and lifestyles. Yeats’s desires, then, to “escape” and return to a place of his youth are here easily seen.

However, a paradox lies in the tension between the “process” of the poem and the “product.” Cleanth Brooks Jr. argues that Yeats “proposed to substitute a concrete, meaningful system, substituting symbol” as a way of combating harsh, technical reality (69). Yeats achieves this through the verbal structure of the poem. All of the verbs, such as “go,” “build,” and “live” are modified by the auxiliary verbs “will” or “shall.” Thus, the result is the sentences connote unrealized ambition; the verbs are in the constant process of continual attainment. By the end of the poem, the speaker has not physically achieved his expressed goals, nor will he ever. However, if one is able to detach the final line, “I hear it in the deep heart’s core,” from the main body of the poem, the contention could be made that the speaker’s goal has been attained after all – through his heart/imagination! The state of “being” is static; the state of “becoming,” that of continual attainment, becomes the desires vehicle which allows us to achieve our goals. This particular reading, then, enables the reader to come to the understanding that whatever is worth attaining is not through physical means, but through the use of the imagination.

It is important to remember that Innisfree is an actual place, and it’s additionally important to understand that there were myths and legends associated with the island. Indeed, Russel K. Alspach argues that to fully understand Yeats and his poem, one must be familiar with the legend of Innisfree:

According to the legend there grew on a tree in the island a luscious fruit, ‘exclusively reserved for the use of the deities’ who had a dragon there to guard it. The daughter of the chief of the island asked her lover, named ‘Free,” to get her some. Free defeated the dragon; but he ate of the fruit and died of its virtue after returning to his sweetheart and telling her his story. Thereupon she too ate of the fruit and fell dead across his body (71).

Yeats was a man continually fascinated by myth, legend, folklore, and the occult, so it comes as little surprise that Innisfree and its legend captured completely his imagination. Innisfree became an island where, as Rama Nand Rai asserts, Yeats wanted to retire to “steep his troubled mind and soul in the solitude of nature” (65).

Yeats felt quite strongly about obtaining Irish independence and, accordingly, traveled lecture circuits with Maude Gonne, a militant nationalist with whom Yeats was very much in love, and who appeared as a tortured image in his poetry for the remainder of his life (“Leda and the Swan”). Yeats was a man who never reconciled fully his subconscious hatred for his father, had serious eye trouble, and suffered from bouts of nervous exhaustion and sexual frustration. Little wonder, then, that Yeats often found himself yearning for those simpler days of yore.

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is a three stanza, twelve line poem. The rhyme scheme consists of A, B, A, B, C, D, C, D, E, F, E, F. A musical cadence can be attributed the lines, a major prosodic tone for Yeats in which is seen an initial assertive statement moving to heavily bunched stresses at the close, followed by a less violent and more regularly stressed statement not of action but of quality or scene (Parkinson 191). there is a pattern of simple contrasts evident: “morning” – a singing cricket, “night” – “day,” “midnight” – “noon,” “water,” – manmade pavement, et cetera. These contrasts serve to suggest the unity of the natural and artificial, the ancient and contemporary.

Yeats’s memories of Innisfree were aroused by the sight of a jet of water spraying out of a London fountain. Hence, the lines: “I will arise and go now, for always night and day/ I hear lake water lapping with low sounds … I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” There is a pervading feeling of a vague longing for something beyond the material scheme of things, but, as Rai contends, “the longing is nearly lost in the languorous sweetness of a dream, with the faint suggestion of a spiritual disquiet” (65).

As much as Foucault and other Poststructuralists would have us believe, a working knowledge of the background of the poem and Yeats’s life is important because it enables one to speculate on further possible readings of the poem. Much of Yeats’s work deals with death, especially life after death. Per Brooks, evidently Yeats felt that after death, the soul goes through various cycles in which it relives its earthly existence, is freed from pleasure and pain, good and evil, and eventually reaches a state of beatitude. The soul remains in existence, and apparently, the relation of the artist to the souls is a highly important one for Yeats (81-2).

With this thought in mind, it is not too unrealistic to assert the possibility of the likelihood that, subconsciously, given the mythology of death surrounding the island, Yeats may indeed be desirous of an escape – a permanent one. Perhaps, given the plausibility that the misery he felt over the plight of society and his failure at relationships would drive him to this, it is not too much to suggest that the chance exists that he was actually consciously aware of the dark finality of this thought. He would, then, actively be endorsing the words of action that lead to the final “product.” If his ultimate solution were on a more subconscious level, it would be engendered through the abstract process of “becoming.” He is not aware he harbors these feelings, nor is he aware of the insinuations he places before the reader. If Yeats felt as is suggested, this would be a suitable alternative to the emotional and social quandaries mortal life produces.

An initial reading of the poem suggests a beautiful, yet one dimensional, desire to escape the grind of modern day life, yet there are ambiguities in the poem which hint at darker possibilities. The ambiguities which exists become evident when considering mythological allusions, intentional fallacy, and the events surrounding Yeats’s life, among other issues. While a combination of several critical methodologies may serve to enhance a more comprehensive understanding of the poem, it also exemplifies the meaning of the poem and encourages the reader to ask whether more interpretations may be just as valid. Ultimately, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is a poem ideally of imagination. It inspires a mode of attempted continual attainment, while simultaneously discouraging attempts to constrain its message to the mainstream. Is it Yeats’s “suicide note?” Doubtfully – believing that would oversimplify the multiple readings possible minimize the overall significance of the poem. However, the poem could serve as an insight into the unfulfilled desires of a tortured soul, hence rendering it a mask, which once engendered, propagates other masks to stretch their imagination in aspiring to final freedom.

Works Cited

Alspach, Russell K. Yeats and Innisfree. Dublin: Dolmen Press Limited, 1965. 71-82.

Brooks, Cleanth Jr. The Permanence of Yeats: Selected Criticism. Ed. James Hall and Martin Steinman. New York: Macmillan, 1950.

Byrd, Thomas L. Jr. The Early Poetry of W.B. Yeats. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat P, 1978.

Parkinson, Thomas. W.B. Yeats: The Later Poetry. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1964.

Peterson, Richard F. William Butler Yeats. Boston; Twayne, 1982.

Rai, Rama Nand. W.B. Yeats: Poetic Theory and Practice. Salzburg: U of Salzburg, 1983.

Yeats, W.B. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Ed. Richard J. Finneran. New York: Collier, 1989. 39.