I Will Arise . . . And Go Now

Claude Monet, In The Garden, 1895

My daily poetry app, Poems Ancient and Modern, dropped a poem in my lap one morning last week. I’ve read this poem many times before, even memorized it at one point. The poem is The Lake Isle of Innisfree, written by William Butler Yeats, in 1888. One of the good things about reading poems all your life is that you get to reread them. This poem speaks to something I feel quite urgently right now: In our turbulent world, where can I find peace? And I thought, just maybe the poets can be helpful.  

 Listen to this beautiful poem.  

 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.

The poet longs for peace, just as I do. He decides to take action: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.” And why Innisfree? Because it is so beautiful, so peaceful, so filled with wonder. This is what he needs right now. “I shall find some peace there,” he confidently asserts.

 The important thing to notice is that he feels this deep longing for beauty and peace and rest even as he stands “on the roadway, or on the pavements grey.” Isn’t that what we often feel when beauty and wonder and peace are missing in our lives? At Innisfree, at least, “I shall have some peace there.” Even on “pavements grey,” he continues to hear the “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.” He hears it “in the deep heart’s core.” The poet has something to share.

 The provocative Irishman Paul Kingsnorth opens his amazing new book this way: When you look around “you just know that something is wrong. . . . you can feel something going on that is not a good thing.” Isn’t this why we long for peace? Isn’t this where our growing anxiety comes from? We long for peace because we sense overwhelmingly that something’s not right.

 Well, I keep asking, how do I find that peace? The late, great Rabbi Abrham Josua Heschel, philosopher and mystic, explains that what we need right now “is the outcome of moments when we are stirred beyond words, of instants of wonder, awe, praise, fear, trembling, and radical amazement.” If we can find those deeper moments, Heschel is suggesting, we will find peace.  

 In these post-Easter days, I am startled how many times Jesus came to his disciples saying “peace be with you.” That blows me away. Yes, this is the peace we’re longing for, isn’t it? Come, Lord Jesus, come. That’s the heart of the matter. How can we find this peace each day?

 We must turn to prayer and contemplation and scripture reading and worship and loving one another. But as we still muddle our way through, on those inescapable “pavements grey,”  maybe turning to poems like this can help. Maybe that’s why I’ve been reading this kind of poetry most of my life. Just maybe we can hear the poets cry from the deep heart’s core. That’s where wonder and peace and awe can be found that will surround the peace that Jesus offers. I’ve concluded that just maybe these poets are saying something that can be helpful.

 Heschel says wonder is “beyond words,” but aren’t the poets the ones who persist to name the unnamable and give language to the ineffable. They can introduce us to wonder and beauty and awe. As I grow older, I want to be rereading and teaching and writing more about what these poets have to say. Stay tuned. And maybe I can pull it all together with the peace that Jesus is offering. “I will arise and go now,” and I will “hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.” And “I will find peace there.” With Jesus, and the poet, “I [will] hear it in the deep heart’s core.”