Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, February 23rd, 2024.

Earlier in the week, we heard W.H. Auden's great elegy for W.B. Yates.

Today, I figured it would be appropriate to read a poem by Yates himself.

It's one we featured a number of years ago, but there's never a bad time to revisit this poem. and it's the Lake Isle of Inis Free.

I'll read the poem once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.

The Lake Isle of Innes Free

I will arise and go now, and go to Innes Free,

And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made,

Nine bean rows will I have there,

A hive for the honeybee,

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 pavement's gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

This poem is wonderful in the way that it develops.

In the first stanza,

you're taken along for a ride by the speaker.

I will arise and go now in present tense.

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