In honor of Earth Day, an early poem by W.B. Yeats:

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 honeybee,
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 the 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.

Yeats is often acknowledged as one of the poets who knew how to write about age, but he is not as often acknowledged as one of the poets who knew how to write about youth. I have heard this marvellous poem discounted as a sentimental piece, not as rich or complex as the mature Yeats. Why not instead appreciate it as a poem of youth, of the direct passion of youth for the natural world, of youth's close attention to the inner spring of the soul's necessity?