Slow Life Blog from the Lake District
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

18/1/2010

0 Comments

 
“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.”
​
From “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B.Yeats

This recording of Yeats reciting “Innisfree” may be old, scratched and barely discernable but it is absolutely wonderful. No poem epitomises the Slow Life better than this. 
It was inspired, as Yeats describes in his introduction to this recording, by Thoreau’s “Walden”. He wrote the poem as a young man, before the publication of his first book of poetry, and it was to become his best loved. But not by Yeats himself who grew tired of it and he was seen to visibly wince when asked to recite it.
He made this recording when he was 67, for the BBC. There is no sign of any tiredness here. If the poem were to be recited by an actor today on a programme such as “With Great pleasure” it would be read as a piece of prose in a conversational style. But not by Yeats, who captures the beauty of the poem by emphasising its rhyme and its rhythm.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

    Archives

    June 2017
    December 2016
    August 2015
    May 2015
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009

    RSS Feed

Home   |   About Me   |   Contact Me

Jonathan Denby's Slow Life blog from the Lake District

© Copyright Slow Life 2020. All rights reserved   |   cookie policy    |   Site by Treble3
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me