Question

Read this excerpt from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats. From which two aspects of modern life does the speaker likely wish to free himself? 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.

Answer 1

The first aspect he is running away from is the agitation of modern life. The line is quite clear: “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow”. The narrator wants some solitude, some  calm and some slowness. The hectic character of modern life, the rat race is not for him.

The second aspect is the disconnection with nature. Indeed, the lines about the beating “heart’s core” “deep” within clearly state that although he is “standing on the roadway or the grey pavement” he yearns for nature, for the “lake, the crickets, the bees, the purple glow of noon”. The binary construction is quite clear, on one end there is the ideal of nature and peace on the other there is the unnatural “grey” and cold disconnection of cities.