this is a very worthy analysis of the yeats poem.... for me it resonates with my experience as an irish man living in the UK....my older brother has died somewhat prematurely in the last month and the poem has been a comfort to me ....thank you for that
I love this poem, I recently lost a good friend and thought, it's okay, Tom has gone home to Innisfree. Innisfree a good and beautiful place where there is peace.
If the good professor had ever been to Sligo in high summer, it never gets dark until around midnight. Midnight all a glimmer, i remember it just like that, and noon's a purple glow - a magical place.. You have to know that part of Ireland to fully appreciate this reminiscence.
@SuperVHSchannel doesn't sound like you have peace dropping slow. Quite aggressive words underneath such beautiful words. Maybe it gets darker for you earlier because of your attitude 😇
I never regreted the 5:50-minutes lecture...the poem is just beautifully interpreted by giving the most simple and comprehensive explanation ...thank you so much for it!! 😁😁😁
A quick correction, he actually didn't grow up in Sligo, he only visited there during summer holidays. He was born in Sandymount, Dublin, grew up between there and London, and was actually seen as somewhat of an outsider as he was an Anglo-Protestant. "Too English to be Irish and too Irish to be English" as my tutor would've said Otherwise great rendition :)
So grateful, I’m moved to tears for this explanation. Bernadette Greevy. An Irish contralto sang an arrangement of this poem that effected me in my youth. I was always so moved listening to it un fortunately I cannot find it now. But after 50 years I still haunts me. I’d love to find the music for it. Your interpretation of the second stanza makes so much sense about the spiritual meaning. I m spiritual and I felt the past souls affirming your words. Many thanks. I feel it in my deep heart core.
Bernadette Greevy, my favourite singer, Anne! I must check all the (many) records I have on which one it is, I let you know if I found the LP with title and year of publication . My house (in Holland!) is called Innisfree ! How about that. But the first time I heard the song, it was not by Bernadette Greevy (1940-2008) though, but by Anne Shelton(1923-1994) , who did a marvellous version.
I don't think this poem is political to be honest...im from Tipperary and understand the way we were treated by colonial powers...but for me Yeats just spoke about freedom and a sense of being one with our beautiful island
It's not that Yeats is conflating midnight's glimmer and noon's purple glow as much as Yeat's reflection of and longing for his youthful hours spent at Innisfree. The entire second verse refers to the passages of time- from the veils of morning (symbolizing Yeat's childhood experiences he longs for now that he is older) through midnight's glimmer (as Yeat's ages) and back again to noon's purple glow, then again to the evening when the linnets return home to roost. Yeat's is also comparing the peaceful passage of time as he remembers it when spending days and nights at the countryside lake, The drab grey of the city roadway can't compare to his memories of the color-lit, pastoral beauty of the country. The journey taken is here is through his memories near and dear to his heart as he travels backwards through time to when he was a boy at Innisfree.
This is also very much, as you point out, about the transcendentalism inspired by Emerson and Thoreau. The power of Yeat's the individual to show how our timeless memories of something beautiful can help us transcend the bland sameness of the now. In the final stanza Yeats repeats that now he is on the roadway, or on the pavements grey- he finds himself often on street after dull street in the bland, colorless city. However, in his heart he still hears the low, steady beat of the the tide against the shore and sees colorful, glowing and glimmering nature. Within Yeats physically, and as you say, spiritually, his own biology echoes with the transcendental peace grounded in the natural world of the Lake Isle of Innisfree!
There Is A Wonderful Orchestrated Piece Of "The Lake Isle Of Innisfree" On a CD By Suzanne Dean Called, "I Wonder" You Can Hear This On Spotify (track 9) or Purchase From Amazon. This Is Brilliant And One Of My Favorite Musical Pieces !
Thank you for sharing this analysis of The Lake Isle of Innisfree. Its beautifully described by David Holdeman and very interesting too. Thank you David.
This is a really good interpretation of the poem I've been looking for a good one for a while because I have an exam and this poem is coming up on the exam
The reading of the poem here is completely flat compared with Yeats' own reading of it. Here the professor could be reading a grocery list. We don't have to be Irish to feel what is meant by the pavement grey or to feel the nostalgia the poem expresses. All great poetry is indirectly - or if you like, directly social, insofar as it opposes the status quo of the prevailing empirical world we live in
