The poem focuses on Innisfree as a place of escape for the speaker. The speaker describes Innisfree as a simple, natural environment where he will build a cabin and live alone. ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ expresses the idea that nature provides an inherently restorative place to which human beings can go to escape the chaos and corrupting influences of civilization.
In this poem, the speaker/Yeats longs to live in the simplicity of nature, with no extraneous distractions of city life or the superfluous habits, customs, and daily routines of an increasingly fast-paced, modern world. The speaker is only dreaming of ‘getting away from it all. Even if he never goes, he will at least have the mental escape.
This is the saving grace; even if he cannot get out of the city, he can imagine the escape as he can hear the lake water lapping even while standing on the pavement in the city. There is another appeal/implication that one can never go back to the past place of nostalgia and youth, but through imagination and reflection, one can always have the mental escape and memory of another time and place.
