St. Patrick’s Day always sees me turn to my favorite Irish poet (perhaps just my favorite poet): William Butler Yeats. For your enjoyment, we’ve pasted one of his more famous poems below — “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

For our own genre twist, we’re wondering what place in a fantasy/sci-fi setting you’d pick to go to for some blissful, rejuvenating solitude. Not necessarily the place you’d most like to go, not necessarily the most beautiful or most exciting, but the place where “peace comes dropping slow,” the place you’d choose to get away from the hurly-burly of the world.

What will it be? The Hall of Fire in Rivendell? Andelain in The Land? What’s your solo getaway spot? We’ll take an entire planet, a region, a town, a house, a room, even a virtual setting.

We’d love to say one lucky commentator will get a round-trip to their own personal Lake Isle, but instead, they’ll have to settle for a giveaway book from our stacks (though let’s face it, for many of us, books are our peaceful, blissful getaway…)

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 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.

Author

  • Bill Capossere

    BILL CAPOSSERE, who's been with us since June 2007, lives in Rochester NY, where he is an English adjunct by day and a writer by night. His essays and stories have appeared in Colorado Review, Rosebud, Alaska Quarterly, and other literary journals, along with a few anthologies, and been recognized in the "Notable Essays" section of Best American Essays. His children's work has appeared in several magazines, while his plays have been given stage readings at GEVA Theatre and Bristol Valley Playhouse. When he's not writing, reading, reviewing, or teaching, he can usually be found with his wife and son on the frisbee golf course or the ultimate frisbee field.

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