飲酒（其五）
結廬在人境，而無車馬喧。
問君何能爾？心遠地自偏。
采菊東籬下，悠然見南山。
山氣日夕佳，飛鳥相與還。
此中有真意，欲辨已忘言。
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
(By W.B. Yeats)
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 honey-bee,
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 lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Tao Yuanming’s 飲酒 and Yeats’s The Lake Isle of Innisfree both express the authors’ dissatisfaction with real life and their love for idyllic life. Both poems use a lot of images with a strong natural atmosphere, making people feel peaceful and comfortable while reading. For example,"結廬" and "采菊" in Tao's poem are similar to "build a small cabin" and "have nine bean-rows" in Yeats's poem, both of which are descriptions of the life the poets desire.
The difference is that Tao has already gotten his ideal life while Yeats not. Tao Yuanming lived in ancient China which was developed by agricultural civilization so it is not difficult for him to have a natural living environment that has not been damaged or polluted. However, Yeats lived in the 19th century, a period of rapid development of capitalist civilization. He saw the great impact, even destruction, of the industrial Revolution on the original life beneath the surface of the rapid development of society. So he wanted to escape from the cruel reality of society, while Tao Yuanming just wanted to stay away from the bureaucratic entanglements.
Both poems have mentioned the connection between real life and the life the poets desire. Tao Yuanming built his house in a noisy world, but he still felt calm and peaceful inside. Yeats, by the end of the poem, pulls the reader away from the good pastoral life and back to the real life--the beautiful pastoral life that he's describing was actually imagined by him at the pavement of the city.
Therefore, in Yeats's poems, we can not only read the same pleasure and romance as Tao Yuanming's poems, but also feel some loss caused by the gap between reality and ideal life.
