Poem to Inspire Retreating to the Country.

Perhaps you will remember the wonderful film about Sean Thornton(John Wayne) returning to his ancestral home in Ireland to purchase his character's family home known as: White o' Morn.  The house is in total ruins today, though they are trying to raise funds to restore it.  It was situated in the fictional town of Innisfree, near Cong.  The town did not exist except in the movie The Quiet Man.   It does exist as a small island in the middle of a lake that William Butler Yates used to visit as a youth.  This poem is about that island, but it is also quite appropriate for the film.  This poem was the inspiration for my sister's retreat to the country, and it is my new found ideal for my own retreat.

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

William Butler Yates.