Yeats’ Yikes!

What makes a poet choose one line over another? One word for another? It’s dusk and I am reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry from its permanent perch on my breakfast table. The script is small and the pages are many (1,865 to be exact) and I vaguely recall a time in seventh grade (and again in college) when I attempted to read the Bible cover to cover.

So far, Norton is winning, albeit slow and steady.

The first two stanzas of W.B. Yeats’ famed poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” or as Yeats would say “po-em” went through numerous revisions. The final version as published in Norton reads:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin built 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.

Yeats took inspiration for this poem from when, one day as a young boy, he watched water dripping and moving across a shop window. The moment was lyrical and memorable for Yeats, and sunk like a taproot into his heart, which longed to live in a hut on the Isle of Innisfree. Innisfree, according to the recorded version I have of Yeats reading this poem out loud, means “ever island” or “heather island” – the recording is difficult to make out accurately. At this particular reading, Yeats chose to begin with “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” as he put it, “because if you know anything about me, you will expect me to begin with it.”

Fair enough. But let’s see what an earlier version of opening stanzas looked like. Notice the different words and punctuation:

I will arise and go now and go to the island of Innisfree
And live in a dwelling of wattles, of woven wattles and wood-work made.
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a yellow hive for the honey-bee,
And this old care shall fade.

There from the dawn above me peace will come down dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to when the household cricket sings;
And noontide there be all a glimmer, and midnight be a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

His desire to escape, to leave behind something painful (“this old care shall fade”) rings true in both versions. The imagery is largely the same. But the final version is rhythmically tighter, and reads more like a song. But I speculate…Oh! To be the mind behind those Irish green eyes of his! To tick-tock work my way through a line here, a line there, faith tied only to the process of writing itself, heart given only to words that come and go, come and go, like the sun’s glimmer at noontide dipping down into a purple glow by nightfall.

The final, full version:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin built 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.

I will arise and go no, 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 gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.