1a. In the first stanza, what specific plans does the speaker relate?
2a. In the third stanza, what memory of Innisfree is strongest when the speaker is not there?
3a. Where does the speaker live now? How do you know?
4a. Describe the different times of day at the Isle of Innisfree.
5a. Yeats wrote "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" more than 100 years ago. Evaluate the relevance of this poem to life today.
1b. What kind of lifestyle does the speaker want to find on Innisfree?
2b. Why might it be important for the speaker's retreat to be an island?
3b. What contrasts in sights and sounds are described or implied by the last stanza?
4b. The speaker says "night and day / I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore." How does this sound make the speaker feel?
5b. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau said, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." What common vision do Yeats and Thoreau share?
Rhyme Scheme. What is the rhyme scheme of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"? Image. Review the cluster chart you made in Literary Tools. What images in the poem appeal to the sense of hearing?
1a. According to the speaker, what is harder than scrubbing a floor or breaking stones?
2a. What comment does the "beautiful woman" make in stanza 2?
3a. What third subject is introduced by the speaker in stanza 3?
4a. Which person in the poem has labored to be beautiful? Which has labored to love in the old way, "compounded of high courtesy"?
5a. Evaluate the speaker's success at the things he has worked for.
1b. What do many people think about this activity? Why?
2b. How is this comment related to the speaker's initial comments?
3b. What hard work is related to this subject?
4b. How does the conversation in this poem relate to Yeats' life and love for Maude Gonne?
5b. What makes it worthwhile to work at something hard, even when there is a chance of failure?
Allusion. Review the cluster chart you made in Literary Tools. What allusions does Yeats make in the poem? What do they reveal about the speaker?
1a. What picture of the state of the world does the speaker draw in stanza 1?
2a. What does the opening of stanza 2 predict? What shape does the speaker see in a vision?
3a. In the last four lines, what is the meaning of the references to "twenty centuries," "a rocking cradle," and "Bethlehem"?
4a. Yeats used the term gyre, which he pronounced with a hard g, to refer to the cycles of history. What three cycles of history are referred to in the poem? How does the speaker feel about the second and third periods?
5a. Evaluate whether the speaker is realistic, optimistic, or pessimistic about the future.
1b. How does the speaker feel about these changes?
2b. How does the speaker's vision differ from the opening prediction of stanza 2?
3b. In the final lines, what does the speaker seem to suggest will be the successor to the age begun, two thousand years ago, by the birth of Jesus?
4b. What events might have led to Yeats's feelings?
5b. Yeats expressed his views on the cycles of history in other poems he wrote. Find one of these poems and summarize the poet's views.
Symbol. What symbols did you find in the poem? What do they represent?
1. "The Second Coming" makes a prediction about what is to come in the world. Write your own prediction about the fate of the twenty-first century.
2. Create a travel brochure for a place that, like Innisfree, is wild and beautiful. In your brochure, use description of the place to create a mood and explain how people will benefit from visiting.
3. Write a paragraph or two about something for which you have worked hard. Explain what you did and why your efforts were important to you.
Adjectives and Participles. Identify the adjectives and participles in the following lines from Yeats's poem "The Stolen Child."
1. Where dips the rocky highland
2. There lies a leafy island
3. Where flapping herons wake
4. The drowsy water-rats
5. And of reddest stolen cherries
6. The dim gray sands with light
7. Weaving olden dances
8. And chase the frothy bubbles
9. Where the wandering water gushes
10. We seek for slumbering trout
Writing a Résumé. Read the Language Arts Survey 6.8, "Writing a Résumé." Then reread the information about Yeats on page 906. Consult several reference works to learn more about Yeats's life. Based on the information that you gather, write a resume for W. B. Yeats. Imagine that the year is 1930 and that Yeats is applying for a position as the director of a new theater department at Dublin University.
Research Findings on W. B. Yeats:
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