WB Yeats Writes The Lake Isle of Inisfree

I hope you enjoy this new extract from my upcoming novel, A Life Before, in which the Irish WB Yeats composes one of his earliest poems and still his most famous, "The Lake Isle of Inisfree". And reads it to his sisters, Lily and Lolly Yeats.

If you'd like to hear what they called "his reading voice, over-dramatic and intense, words all emphatic" as described below, you can listen in to a reading he did for the BBC in similar fashion years later, here.

The winter pre-Christmas that year was cold, with a stillness over the city made dismal with fog and smog. Evening after evening, as the younger Yeatses gathered around the small fire before their father came home, carefully managing the coals from a bag kindly left on the doorstep by some Bedford Park donor, Lily or Lolly would recall for them all the beauties of Howth and of Sligo, the fine view of the harbour, the small smoke of the cottages rising into fresh sea air above, the woods behind. Susan would sit, staring sternly into her darning. WB referred to the city always as "this melancholy London". The homesickness gave strength to an ambition he'd forged in imitation of Thoreau the summer in Sligo when he read his book Walden, of taking himself off in like fashion to Innisfree. This rocky islet, covered with many bushes, rising some forty feet above the lake. Often when life and its difficulties had seemed to him like the lessons of some elder boy given to a younger by mistake, he dreamt of going there. Building a wooden hut there and burning a few years out, like Thoreau, rowing to and fro and fishing, and living on the fish and beans that he'd plan and honey bees that he'd live. Lying off on the island slopes by day, and listening at night to the ripple of the water, and the quivering of unknown creatures in the bushes, and going out at morning to see the island’s edge marked by the feet of birds. When out, walking its streets he often found himself imagining all the souls who had died out of it, lost like himself, and compelled to walk the place, in perpetuity. He felt them passing him, like a whiff of air, in the fog. That's what he was half thinking of one morning as we went walking through the bustling streets of Fleet Street, the clamor of carriages on the street side, imagining the cynical conversations inside the newspaper offices on the other. A quieter sound caught his attention, as quiet often can amidst noise. A little tinkle of water. He turned towards it, moved in its direction, and found in a shop-window a fountain, balancing a little ball on its jet. He stopped, staring for a long time with an aching heart. Something about its movement transported him back to Lough Gill in Sligo, that wood-bordered and islanded lake, where he’d often gone blackberry-gathering and slept out among the birds. He was almost felled by yearning. Oh for a sod of earth from some field he knew, or something of Sligo, to hold in his hand. He stood for a long time in the flow of the fountain's water, hearing the distant echo of Lough Gill and Lough Carr, of flapping heron wings and the soft plashes of drowsy water rats. As he turned towards home words rose in him, unbidden, stirring to the beat of his feet on the pavement. He began to recite the phrases that arrived in his head. A hive for the honey bee. Lake water lapping with low sound. All the color in contrast to the roadway, and the pavements so grey. Before he reached home, he had a full poem. Three verses, the whole thing, complete. He recited it aloud to himself, to make sure, though people were looking at him as he passed, he hardly saw them. The words that brought him back in Sligo bore him home to Bedford Park. *** As he walked up the front path, he could see Helen Acosta, a friend who worked at Morris's with his sisters paining with Lolly, by the window. Lily sat, sewing, by the fire. Willy burst in on top of them, all the fire of conscious creation firing. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” he shouted. Lily said, “What is it?” “‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree!’ My new poem!" "Oh do calm down Willie,” Lolly said. "It has come whole, fully formed. Listen.” He began to recite in what his sisters called his reading voice, over-dramatic and intense. Lolly and Miss Acosta exchanged a knowing look at his theatricality. Each word was enunciated with such fervor and passion that it bordered on the comical. Lolly bit her lip. It was a battle to keep the laughter at bay. Miss Acosta reached for a paint brush. He stumbled, slid into stopping. "Go on, Willie," Lily said. "That was lovely... about peace and the veils of the morning. How does it go on?" "I shall have some peace there," he repeated, giving Miss Aosta and Lolly a scathing look that showed he thought them one good reason a boy would long for escape. "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... " during his grand performance. Trying not to laugh only made the thing funnier. He turned his back to them, and address the last stanza only to Lily, whose encouraging eyes called forth the words all the way to the end. “I hear it in the deep heart’s core”. He gave a little cough to say it was over, then gave a little bow. Lolly led the applause. Lily, who had listened to the words, was moved, so anyone would be who was paying attention, anyone who has ever been homesick for their country or any lost Eden. Which is the whole of humanity, give or take none. “Oh Willie," she said. "I can see Sligo’s beauty. I can hear the lake water lapping. It’s beautiful.” It was no good. The sister who was critical would always find a bigger reception in him than the sister who was kind. He left them and went up to his bedroom to write it down. And at his desk, where neither criticism nor kindness ruled, he found the cold peace of creative .

The Lake Isle of Innisfree I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, 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 pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

To be continued... Stay tuned for the next extract.