Yeats rides the tube to Innisfree

No amount of parks, gardens and recreation areas in London can put out from my heart the hankering for the lost patch under the sun. And the more it rains, as it has for the last couple of weeks – the more I feel at one with the trecherous sun and its guilty accomplices, of which the sea, the lake and the green fields, are the chief culprits. In this state of cheerful gloom, Yeats opened his almonry to me today on the Tube:

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 gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

(The Lake Isle of Innisfree)