Put "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1890) and "The Second Coming" (1920) next to each other, and you see the same poet at two different stages of his life — and more importantly, with two very different states of mind. The first poem reflects a young man's fantasy: a cozy cabin, nine rows of beans, and the soothing sound of lake water in contrast to a gray city street. The second poem captures a middle-aged man's terror: a falcon breaking free from its handler, and a monstrous creature moving toward a birth that threatens to unravel everything. Both poems are by W. B. Yeats and are among the most memorized in the English language. They revolve around a central question — what should a person do when the world feels off-kilter? Yet, their answers could not be more different. Innisfree seeks solace within, discovering a personal sanctuary; The Second Coming looks outward and witnesses history fracturing. Reading them side by side clearly illustrates how a poet evolves — not only in style or themes, but in his entire understanding of poetry's purpose. Together, these two poems outline the full trajectory of Yeats's imagination, transitioning from lyrical escape to prophetic anxiety.
The Reader's Atlas · Compare · Modernist Apocalypses
The Lake Isle of InnisfreeThe Second Coming
Put "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1890) and "The Second Coming" (1920) next to each other, and you see the same poet at two different stages of his life — and more importantly, with two very different states of mind.
Poets
W. B. Yeats
Years
1890 / 1920
Chapter
Modernist Apocalypses
§01 The thesis
The Lake Isle of Innisfree & The Second Coming
A reader's case for putting these two side by side — what each carries, and what they argue when they sit on the same page.
§02 The dialectic axes
The two poems on four axes
Each axis isolates one specific vector — speaker, form, image, closing move — and reads the two poems against each other on that single dimension.
Axis
Poem A
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
W. B. Yeats
Poem B
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats
01Speaker
Poem A · The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The speaker in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" feels deeply personal and alone. He’s just one man on a busy city street, listening to a sound that nobody else seems to notice. His voice comes purely from emotion — he expresses a longing rather than any factual knowledge.
Poem B · The Second Coming
The speaker in "The Second Coming" sees himself as a witness to a reality that transcends individual lives. He doesn’t express a desire with *I want* — instead, he asserts *I know*. This insight comes from what Yeats referred to as the Spiritus Mundi, a collective human unconscious, and the significance of that insight is rooted in history, not personal experience.
02Form
Poem A · The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Three quatrains each start with a refrain-like line: "I will arise and go now." The rhythm feels slow and almost magical, like a spell being cast. This repetition captures the speaker's compulsive return to the same dream.
Poem B · The Second Coming
Two stanzas of varying lengths without a repeating refrain. The first stanza delivers a series of declarations quickly. The second stanza transitions into a lengthy, meandering sentence that concludes with a question. This structure reflects a sense of disintegration followed by a feeling of dread.
03Central Image
Poem A · The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The island of Innisfree is composed of familiar, sensory details — clay, wattles, bean rows, a beehive, the sound of crickets, and the quick movement of linnet wings. Each image feels intimate and tangible, as if a single pair of hands could easily touch or create it.
Poem B · The Second Coming
The beast in "The Second Coming" — with the body of a lion and the head of a man, slowly dragging its thighs through the desert sand — is massive and otherworldly. It's untouchable and beyond reason. This image comes from mythology and occult symbolism, defying any comforting interpretation.
04Closing Move
Poem A · The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Innisfree concludes by drawing the poem deep into the speaker's being: the lake water resonates "in the deep heart's core." This final shift emphasizes internalization — the refuge remains, existing solely as sound and memory.
Poem B · The Second Coming
"The Second Coming" concludes with an open question: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" This ending offers no comfort. The question isn't rhetorical — Yeats truly leaves us in the dark about what the beast is, merely indicating that it is on its way.
§03 Synthesis & departure
The shared ground and the divergence
Shared
Both poems by Yeats are compact and start with a speaker who feels deeply out of sync with their surroundings. In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," the speaker is on gray pavements, feeling disconnected from the city life around them. In "The Second Coming," the speaker observes a world where "the centre cannot hold," and daily life has become unsustainable. This sense of estrangement is a common theme.
Each poem hinges on a single powerful image that conveys its emotional depth: the island and its lake in Innisfree, and the slouching beast in The Second Coming. Yeats doesn’t over-explain these images — he trusts them to resonate on their own. Both poems also pay careful attention to sound. Innisfree creates a musical quality with gentle repetition and fluid consonants, while The Second Coming employs stark, hard-hitting statements. Lastly, both poems conclude with a feeling of tension instead of closure — one speaker remains on the pavement, while one history continues to stumble toward an incomplete birth.
Where they diverge
The most significant difference lies in their direction. Innisfree looks inward; the speaker seeks solace in a private, imagined place to escape a fractured present. In contrast, The Second Coming expands outward into shared history. One poem captures a daydream, while the other presents a vision that feels thrust upon the speaker against his will.
This difference shapes the form of each poem. Innisfree features loose yet musical quatrains, creating a gentle lapping rhythm that mirrors the lake water it describes. The Second Coming, however, has a rougher texture — its opening stanza bursts forth with short, declarative sentences, while the second stanza devolves into a long, unresolved question. Innisfree concludes softly, with the lake water echoing "in the deep heart's core." The Second Coming ends with a question mark, leaving the beast in motion and the situation unresolved.
The emotional tone also diverges sharply. Innisfree is filled with longing and a sense of tenderness, whereas The Second Coming lacks any tenderness, presenting only the "blank and pitiless" gaze of a creature unaware of the devastation it is about to unleash on the world.
§04 A reader's order of operations
Which to read first
If you started with "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and appreciated its gentle sorrow, then check out "The Second Coming" to witness how that same yearning for a better reality turns into fear. Yeats shifts from dreaming of escape to bracing for what's ahead, whether he likes it or not. The two poems almost serve as a before-and-after snapshot of a sensibility shaped by historical turmoil.
If you discovered Yeats through "The Second Coming" and want to trace the roots of that prophetic voice, "Innisfree" will catch you off guard with its simplicity and warmth — it's still the same poet grappling with an unbearable world, but instead of reaching for a monster, he's reaching for a beehive.
§05 Reader's questions
On The Lake Isle of Innisfree vs The Second Coming, frequently asked
Answer
Yes, often. They are among the most common pairings in English literature classes that focus on Yeats, mainly because they represent the early and late stages of his career, highlighting the significant evolution of his voice. Comparing these works is a typical essay prompt in A-level and university courses.
Answer
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" came out in 1890, thirty years prior to the release of "The Second Coming" in 1920. Yeats penned Innisfree when he was in his mid-twenties, while he wrote The Second Coming in the wake of World War One and the Irish War of Independence.
Answer
From Innisfree, the line "I hear it in the deep heart's core" resonates as the final thought. In "The Second Coming," the line "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" is the most widely quoted globally, and writers like Chinua Achebe and Joan Didion have used it as a title or epigraph.
Answer
Yeats created a complex personal mythology, detailed in his prose work *A Vision*, where history unfolds in interlocking spirals known as gyres. Each gyre tightens until it collapses, giving rise to a new opposing gyre. "The Second Coming" portrays one of these collapses—the conclusion of the 2,000-year Christian era.
Answer
Yes. Innisfree is a small island located on Lough Gill in County Sligo, Ireland. Yeats spent time in the area as a child and later mentioned that the poem was inspired by a moment in London when he heard the sound of water trickling from a shop window display, which suddenly filled him with homesickness for Sligo.
Answer
Not really. The poem stands alone as a powerful vision of civilizational collapse — the imagery of the beast, the widening gyre, and the drowning of innocence are vividly clear without needing to know *A Vision*. The occult framework adds depth to the poem, but it's not necessary to appreciate its impact.
Answer
Critics often see "The Second Coming" as Yeats's most impressive technical work. Its tight structure, mastery of tone, and ability to evoke terror in just twenty-two lines showcase Yeats at his best. While "Innisfree" has a special place in many hearts, it's usually viewed as an earlier and more traditional lyric. Yeats himself had mixed feelings about the popularity of "Innisfree," believing it detracted from the recognition of his more ambitious later pieces.
§06 More from this chapter
The center cannot hold
4 comparisons in this chapter