I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
The poem’s famous first line seems simple at first glance but has a complex rhythm and meaning. The line is written in hexameter, containing six stressed syllables. However, it has a caesura in the middle of the line where two unstressed syllables (”now” and “and”) are side by side. This creates a pause in the rhythm that forces the reader to slow down. In addition to the rhythm, the first line also builds on an allusion to the Book of Luke in the New Testament. The phrase “I will arise and go” is used by the Prodigal Son who has fallen into servitude in a foreign land and longs to go home. Similarly, the speaker of this poem is unhappily living in a large, perhaps foreign city and wishes to return home to the Irish countryside. The phrase is repeated again at the beginning of the third stanza.
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
Here, the speaker gives us an idea of how he will sustain himself on the island. He says that he will grow his own food and keep some bees. This is similar to the kind of self-reliance Henry David Thoreau championed in Walden.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings
The speaker imagines that he will have peace of mind in Innisfree. Peace is compared to the fog of the early morning that drops from the sky. This white fog is described with the metaphor of the “veils of mornings.” This adds to a spiritual feeling in the poem, as veils are a type of head covering used in religious contexts.
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow
In Innisfree, the stars are so bright that it is as if the sky is “glimmer[ing].” In contrast, during the day the heather plants are reflected in the water of the lake, creating a “purple glow.” These two imagines depict Innisfree as an otherworldly place, since midnight is bright and noon is hazy. This is the opposite of what one expects: a dark midnight and a bright noon.
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
In the famous final lines of the poem, the speaker says that even in the city he holds the memory of Innisfree within him. The image of the “deep heart’s core” is an old one in English literature, used from Shakespeare and Percy Shelley to Algernon Charles Swinburne. Etymologically, the word “core” is related to heart. The speaker shows his extremely attached relationship to the island of Innisfree by effectively saying it lives in “the very heart of my heart.”
