Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker is an unnamed person who dreams of leaving for Innisfree. He plans to build a cabin and grow beans. He dreams of the peace he will find there among nature. However, he is currently living in a large city that he wishes to escape. Even there, he cannot forget Innisfree.
Form and Meter
The poem uses an ABAB rhyme scheme. The first three lines of each stanza are in loose iambic hexameter (six feet of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one). However, each of these lines also contains a caesura with two unstressed syllables side by side. The fourth line of each stanza is in iambic tetrameter (four feet of iambs).
Metaphors and Similes
“Veils of the morning” is a metaphor for the fog. The morning fog around Innisfree is white and appears to hang downward, just like a woman’s veil.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration: the “h” sound in “hive” and “honey”
Alliteration: the “l” sound in “lapping” and “low”
Assonance: the repeated “o” sounds in the phrase “go now, and go to”
Assonance: the repeated “o” sounds in “noon” and “glow”
Irony
N/A
Genre
Romanticism, pastoral
Setting
The poem takes place in a large city with “roadway[s]” and “pavements grey.” However, the poem mostly describes the island of Innisfree in Sligo County of western Ireland.
Tone
Longing, peaceful, meditative
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the speaker, who longs to return to the island of Innisfree to find peace and calmness. The antagonist is the modern world that bars him from this idyllic paradise.
Major Conflict
The poem’s major conflict is between the peace and harmony of the Irish countryside and the alienation and greyness of the metropolitan city. The speaker wants to live in nature but is trapped in an urban world.
Climax
The poem reaches its climax when the speaker suggests that he is in the city. This means that his intention to “arise and go” does not mean he is actually leaving for Innisfree. Rather, it is an unreachable dream.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
The phrase “I will arise and go” comes from the King James translation of the Bible. In The Book of Luke in the New Testament, this phrase occurs within the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It tells of a young man who wants to build his own way in the world. He asks his father for his inheritance and leaves for a foreign land. There he hits bad luck and is pushed into indentured servitude. Eventually, he decides to return back to his father’s land. He declares his attention by saying “I will arise and go” (Luke 15.18-19). The same phrase is also used in 2 Samuel 3.21.
The phrase “always night and day” is used in Mark 5.5 to describe cleansing oneself from unclean spirits in the mountains.
The “nine bean-rows” mentioned in the poem is an allusion to Henry David Thoreau's Walden, which includes a chapter about self-reliance and living off of the land titled “The Bean-Field.”
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The “roadway” and “pavements grey” are a synecdoche for the city.
Personification
The phrase “the veils of morning” personifies the fog, as it is wearing a head covering.
The cricket is described as singing a song.
Hyperbole
The phrase “deep heart’s core” is an example of hyperbole because the words “heart” and “core” essentially mean the same thing: one center. The use of these words together emphasizes that the speaker has Innisfree at the very center of his being, his heart of hearts.
Onomatopoeia
The word “lapping” is used to describe the sound of water hitting the shore on the lake.
