"When I was a young lad in the town of Sligo I read Thoreau's essays and wanted to live in a hut on an island in Lough Gill called Innisfree which means "Heather Island." I wrote the poem in London when I was about 23." W.B. Yeats (1865-1939).
Yeats was born in Dublin but moved to London when he was 2 years old and lived there till he was 16.
The poem is a subjective expression of a young man's yearning for his childhood Eden to offset the alienation he experienced in the urban landscape of the metropolis of London.
The tranquil rhythm of the lyric- "my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music" (Yeats)- emphasises an implicit contrast with the hustle and bustle of London.
The diction of the first line of the poem -"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree"- is archaic and signals the nostalgic mood which permeates the entire poem.
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