From Innisfree to Ballylee: sights of Sligo and Coole

The Flickrists Bunnygoth and Irelandseye have a number of stunning pictures of our favorite Lake Isle - the pictures are copywritten, so I can't post them directly. You might, however, turn your eyes towards these views of the mainland from the lake isle, the sun streaming in between the isle's pines, and this unbelieveable waterfall. Honestly, it all looks like something out of a theme park or a movie: it's not hard to see how the setting motivated Yeats's Thoreauvian dream.

Note also the preponderance of geese: the wild geese of Yeats's writing recall the revolutionaries who fled Ireland as the British government began cracking down on Irish resistance, but they have a literal parallel in the geese of County Sligo.


A picture from Coole Park, by Davers. Yeats spent his later life in Coole County, in a castle he called Thoor Ballylee:

Photo by flipsockgrrl. The titles of two volumes of poetry from this period - The Wild Swans at Coole (1917) and The Tower (1928) - recall these sights.