Compare the two poems

 Which vision of Irish immigrants is given by the two poems.

 Send your answer (Friday, April 2nd)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, 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 I will live alone in the bee loud glade.

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 always in the deep heart's core.

-- William Butler Yeats

 

 

 

 

 

Like oil lamps, we put them out the back —

of our houses, of our minds. We had lights
better than, newer than and then

a time came, this time and now
we need them. Their dread, makeshift example:

they would have thrived on our necessities.
What they survived we could not even live.
By their lights now it is time to
imagine how they stood there, what they stood with,
that their possessions may become our power:
Cardboard. Iron. Their hardships parceled in them.
Patience. Fortitude. Long-suffering
in the bruise-colored dusk of the New World.

And all the old songs. And nothing to lose.

 

Eavan Boland, "The Emigrant Irish," from Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990. Copyright © 1987 by Eavan Boland.

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