W. B. Yeats Research Paper

William Butler Yeats: a nationalistic Irish Poet and Protestant who lived during the twentieth century. He was a part of the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled much of political, economic, cultural, and social life of Ireland. Most members of this minority considered themselves English people who merely happened to have been born in Ireland, as Catholicism was the most predominant faith of the Irish people. Yeats, however, still felt a strong sense of nationalism towards his birthplace of Ireland, even though he lived in London for the majority of his childhood. He maintained his cultural roots, using Irish heroes, legends, and mythology in his poetry. 1885 marked Yeats’ first publication: “The Statues” by Dublin University

W. H. Auden praised Yeats in a short essay entitled “Yeats as an Example.” Auden assigned Yeats the high praise of having written “some of the most beautiful poetry” of modern times, and wrote on to applaud him for his poetic elements (Auden). Seamus Heaney, in his similarly titled essay “Yeats as an Example?” extoled Yeats for continually altering and refining his poetic craftsmanship. “He is, indeed, the ideal example for a poet approaching middle age,” Heaney commented, on Yeats’ persistent improvement (“W.B Yeats”, Poetry

While not explicitly specified in the poem, the narrator must have already lived in the Innisfree lake isle before, as he already knows what life would be like there and paints a very descriptive scene of the environment: “where the cricket sings,” “There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow”, and “evening full of the linnet’s wings” (Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree). Filled with nostalgia, he reflects upon his previous life at Lake Innisfree and the memories he had made there. No specific audience is stated within the poem, as it is just the speaker remembering the serene and picturesque lake within his own mind. The main purpose of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is to communicate the deep longing the narrator feels for the lake isle. He has a profound emotional attachment to his past home, as he mentions it is “in the deep heart’s core.” Structurally, the poem is rather straightforward. An ABAB rhyme scheme is found throughout the entire poem, and the stanzas are all four lines each with a similar number of syllables. The rather uniform pattern reflects Yeats’ more sophisticated style that he perfected during his time with the Rhymers’ Club. Diction and sentence structure are not overly complex, but effective in describing the speaker’s emotions and the setting. The images are vividly descriptive, and their fluidity also hints that