The Lake Isle of Innisfree is a short poem by W. B. Yeats written in 1888 and first published in 1890. Standing on a grey London pavement, the poet longs to escape to a small island in Lough Gill, in County Sligo, and live there alone in a cabin among the bees. It is one of the best-loved poems in English.
The poem
In three quatrains, the speaker imagines building a small cabin of clay and wattles, planting beans and keeping bees.
The final stanza returns to the city, where he still hears the lapping of the lake in the deep heart.
Thoreau's influence
As a boy, Yeats had read Thoreau's Walden, and dreamed of living like him on Innisfree, a little island he knew from his childhood in Sligo.
The poem was born years later, when the sound of a fountain in a London shop window reminded him of lake water.
Fame
The poem was published in the National Observer in 1890 and included in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics in 1892.
It quickly became his most popular poem, a fact that Yeats himself later found a little irritating.
Anecdotes
Fleet Street
Yeats wrote that the poem came to him while walking down Fleet Street, homesick, when he saw a small fountain with a ball balanced on its jet in a shop window.
Sligo
Yeats spent much of his childhood with his mother's family in County Sligo, whose lakes and mountains appear throughout his poetry. He is buried at Drumcliff.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Innisfree?
In Lough Gill, County Sligo, in Ireland.
When was the poem first published?
In 1890.
Which book inspired Yeats's dream?
Thoreau's Walden.