Happy St. Patrick's Day

Isle of Innisfree, Lough Gill. Photo from here.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! Today my thoughts are not of leprechauns and green beer (the horror) but of W.B. Yeats, my favourite Irish poet (perhaps my favourite poet, period). Here's one of his many beautiful poems set in Sligo, an area of Ireland very close to my heart (I studied his poetry there one summer many years ago). Bain taitneamh as!

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. —W.B. Yeats