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The flawed human we all know as William Butler Yeats wrote like an angel, but when he read his words, he didn’t intone them so much as drone them, which if one listens enough to old recordings, seems to have been the style at the time. It’s hard to mess up a beautiful poem. And as for me, I think Yeats does just fine.
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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.
This little isle in the photos by the way is in the South Mountain in Pennsylvania, not Ireland.
William Butler Yeats
In Memory of W. B. Yeats