I IS FOR......

I is for....the Irish


What else could it be for this week?  Probably half ABC Wednesday chose this.


Well I'm not Irish in fact I'm mostly Welsh and I missed St. David's Day on March 1st, so am I being a traitor?  No, I looked for daffodils  but they were a straggly lot in the store, and we had an especially busy week that week so my time for creativity was limited.  But my husband and I did wear our small daffodil pins all that day, so don't give up on us all you Welshmen and women out there.


But back to the IRISH


I came to this post backwards really.  I wanted a poem or a line from a poem beginning with I, so I went through my Palgrave's Golden Treasury and came across William Butler Yeats, (I'll probably be sorry I didn't save him for 'Y' day)-- an Irish poet, and that reminded me that St. Patrick's Day is this week.   In addition, the poem I found was all 'I's -- The Lake of the Isle of Innisfree. I also found a royalty free photo of what is supposed to be the Isle of Innisfree.  So there it was, handed to me on a plate.


First a drawing of the poet,

(Artist: John Sargent Singer - 1908)

Yeats lived from 1863 to 1939 and spent much of his childhood in County Sligo, Ireland. He spent many carefree hours adventuring on the beautiful Lough Gill, a lake in County Sligo where the small uninhabited Isle of Innisfree was located. The area so impressed his young mind that he thought of it almost as his spiritual home.  (I can identify with this because of the enormous impact Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire had on me in my youth... hence the name 'flamblogger' for my blog.)

It is said that later in his life while living in London, he was wandering down Fleet Street and heard the tinkling of water from a fountain in a shop close by.  The sound took him back in time to Innisfree.  Thus the poem was born.

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.

It should be mentioned that this poem of Yeats' is NOT the same as the song sung in movie "The Quiet Man" which is just called The Isle of Innisfree.

For the sake of his contribution to the world of literature and poetry, and because of his profuse writing, we should also note  that he did much to revive the art of poetry and literature among his countrymen and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 

Having written all this, and because I rather like the sentiment of this poem, I think I will look up some more of his poetry to read, especially the one with the intriguing title of "The Winding Staircase".

For more contributions to Mrs. Nesbitt's ABC WEDNESDAY, click on this link, I know you won't be sorry.