The Lake Isle of InnisFree and Advent Yearning

This is a re-post that I did last year during Advent.

This poem by W.B. Yeats is not normally associated with Advent or Christmas but for me it has a quality of yearning and some sentiments that sit well with this time of the year when "peace comes dropping slow "

The poem draws on one of Yeats' talismanic landscapes, that of Co. Sligo. 

He was prompted to write the poem in London where he felt exiled from the rural beauty he captures so brilliantly in the poem.

When Yeats was a child, his father had read to him from Walden by Thoreau and Yeats described his inspiration for the poem by saying that while he was a teenager, he wished to imitate Thoreau by living on Innisfree, an uninhabited island in Lough Gill. 

The sound of water coming from a fountain in a shop window in Fleet Street reminded Yeats of the lake that he had previously seen, and it is this inspiration that Yeats credits for the creation of the poem.   

He remembers Innisfree as a utopia  that would supply all his needs. His memory tricks him into thinking it had a beautiful summer climate all year round.

So what is the connection of this to Advent and Christmas.  One side of Christmas embodies childhood and magic and make- believe, the part of our psyche that instinctively hard wires us to recapture the innocence and awesome wonder of a child. 

But the harsh reality of  Christmas is that it cannot continue all year round and it cannot supply all our needs. In fact  it is the heightened and unrealistic expectations of the season that can cause so many problems.

We want to be happy, we want to be generous, we want to get along with everyone but we fail miserably.

But somewhere too in our souls we carry the original blessing of the garden of Eden and the idyllic peace and quiet of a life born and lived in the true freedom of our creator God. That yearning desire and hope can never be extinguished.

Perhaps I like it because I too can so often feel hemmed in by the artificiality and the hubbub of the season's commercial trappings and am longing for the birth of Jesus that lies "in the heart's deep core."

The song is sung in Gaelic but the English lyrics are below.

There are a few mistakes in the words of the video so the correct ones are below :

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 gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.