Question

What kind of the place does the poet imagine

Answer 1

If you're asked to give directions 
To a strange uncommon place 
Don't fret or frown 
Nor pull that puzzled face 

Just pipe up to say 
Oh, easy is the way 

Just go through a labyrinth 
Onto fields of hyacinth 
Behind the very next mirage 
Next to the goblin's garage 
Down below to the fairy's forest 
Where you be an ogre's guest 
Walk then to the hut of a gnome 
Where wicked witches roam 
Or where trolls have made their home 
Around the toothfairy's dome. 
Then turn left to where the wily wizard stayed 
Behind the corner where pointy pixies played 
And then to the right 
Where brownies dwelled 
In lil mushroom mansions where spells they spelled 
And if you've time to actually eavesdrop 
Place that ear against the keyhole of the elve's lil shop 
Hear their enchanting chants 
As they sell their magic wands 
Hear tall tales about short pixies 
Or of leprechauns in their sixties 
Then you'll come across a genie's cave 
Where when you see a sprite, just wave 
To shrink to toadstool size now 
Don't you pick a silly row 
Just ask that genie to show you how 

Then lastly move on to where lived the imps 
Ah those might really have descended from chimps 
But the notion and these creatures are imaginary 
Like greek mythology and the theory 
If travellers willfully want to be lost 
Send them there at all or no cost.

Answer 2

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HOMEWORK HELP > THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

What kind of life does the poet William Butler Yeats imagine in his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"? 

What kind of life does the poet William Butler Yeats imagine in his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?

 

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RAREYNOLDS | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR

Yeats imagines Innisfree as an idyllic place of peace and solitude. He imagines a "small cabin" of "clay and wattles" where he will support himself on beans and honey from his bee hive, and he will "live alone in the bee-loud glade." There is also a sense that the "peace" he will find there is connected to its natural beauty, since peace "comes dropping slow, / Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings."

Of course, there is also the sense that this is perhaps not a real place, or that his imaginary conception of his life there is (knowingly) impractical or impossible. He hears the lapping water of the lake "always" while he is standing "on the roadway, or on pavements grey." In other words, Yeats's real world is a world of "pavements," a place where nature has been changed by man to make it easier to drive or conduct business. The contrast with the lake isle is stark: he feels a longing for this place of peace in his "heart's core," which could mean that he is longing for an ideal or feeling rather than an actual clay cabin.

 

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JAMEADOWS | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR

In his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," Yeats imagines a peaceful, removed life on an island. He imagines constructing a simple cabin made of "clay and wattles" and planting beans and having a bee hive. He also imagines a life of solitude, where the only noise will be the buzzing of the bees. His life on Innisfree will be peaceful, and nature will be at its idealistic best, with glimmering midnights and purple skies at noon. He also pictures a lake and the sound of lapping water.

The world Yeats conjures is one of solitude and escape from the noise of civilization. Innisfree is also free of human companionship, and Yeats seems to imagine living in a world in which he can largely be self-sufficient. This poem is an expression of the Romantic instinct to live on one's own with the inspiration of nature in a life of total simplicity.