My Favourite Things #3

If you like a little alliteration with your onomatopoeia, old Yeats is your guy.

One of the most lyrical examples in the English language is a line from The Lake Isle of Innisfree: "I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore."

I heard a (probably drunk) Irish dude reading it on the CBC the other night. The Irish are second only to the Welsh in making almost everything they read sound musical and a little like poetry. Even the phone bill.

Anyway, I present for you one of my favourite poems in the English language. I've got a framed copy of it on my wall at home -- a reminder that no matter how smart I think I am, I'll never produce anything as close to perfection as this is.

The 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 mourning 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.