The Lake Isle of Innisfree

What we know from Yeats’s autobiography is that from a young age, he saw Innisfree as a potential place to experiment with solitude as Thoreau did at Walden Pond (See: Further Reading and Resources). This was due to his father reading Thoreau to him as a child. After seeing a fountain in an advertisement in the Strand, he started thinking of Lough Gill and his childhood again. With these notations, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” can be read as a biographical poem. Although Yeats is never completely clear within the text about his suffering, he notes that the speaker longs to find “some peace there” (Line 5). If the speaker is indeed Yeats himself, this indicates that at the present moment, he is restless or distressed, and traveling back to the simpler times of his youth through this poem provides a brief respite.

When life is difficult, we often return to childhood dreams. As a young man perhaps overwhelmed with London, Yeats contrasts the “grey” (Line 11) city streets with a nostalgic memory of the natural beauty of Innisfree. He believes if he could simplify his life—pruning it down to a “small cabin” (Line 2), “bean-rows” (Line 3), and a “hive for the honey-bee” (Line 3)—he would be happier.