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1. Why and how do we study language and literature?

2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?

3. In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted?

4. How does language use vary amongst text types and amongst literary forms?

5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?

6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?

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1. How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a text?

2. How do we approach texts from different times and cultures to our own?

3. To what extent do texts offer insight into another culture?

4. How does the meaning and impact of a text change over time?

5. How do texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

6. How does language represent social distinctions and identities?

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Here is an analysis of the poem by Seamus Heaney. Heaney was an Irish playwright, poet, and academic; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Heaney's career was both prolific and successful. In 1966, he published his first major work, Death of a Naturalist, in which this poem is included. Three years later, he published his second volume of poetry, Door into the Dark. By this time, Heaney was already receiving critic acclaim for his writing, and a slew of academic lectures followed. While many of his poems can be construed as being political in nature, the majority of his poems fall under the category of naturalism; many of the images in his poem are taken from his surroundings in Northern Ireland. Heaney died on August 30, 2013, after a short illness.

This poem is autobiographical in nature. The speaker, presumably Heaney, is sitting at his writing desk, preparing to write, when he hears his father working in the garden outside. This conjures memories of the speaker as a young boy, listening and watching as his father digs in the potato garden. The speaker marvels at how well his father digs, which conjures an even older memory of his grandfather, his father's father, completing the arduous task of digging through peat moss. Toward the end of the poem, the speaker writes as though he can smell the potatoes from the garden and the peat moss his grandfather has dug. He confesses that he does not have a spade like the two generations before him, but he does have a pen which he will use to "dig."

The poem, which can be read in full here, is comprised of eight stanzas of varying length. There is no set rhyme scheme, though some of the lines do rhyme.

Stanza One

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

The first stanza contains only two lines. The speaker is focusing on the pen in his hand. Heaney utilizes a simile, telling the reader the pen rests "snug as a gun." The reference to a gun is no coincidence: Heaney expects the reader to infer that the pen is his instrument, his weapon. This idea will repeat itself in the last stanza of the poem.

Stanza Two

In the second stanza, the speaker hears the sound of his father's garden spade sinking "into gravelly ground." He gazes down at his father while he works in the garden. There is no punctuation at the end of the last line in stanza two, the thought is continued into the third stanza.

Stanza Three

Heaney utilizes a flashback quite cleverly in the third stanza. The speaker is suddenly transported to twenty years ago, watching his father complete the same task.

Stanza Four

The fourth stanza is rich in description, as the speaker paints the image of his father digging through the potato beds.

Stanza Five

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

The fifth stanza is comprised of just two simple lines as the speaker marvels at his father. The reader is then transported even further through time as the speaker then conjures images of his grandfather performing a similar task.

Stanza Six

The eight lines contained in the sixth stanza are the longest in the poem. The first two lines read:

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Here, the reader gets a glimpse into the setting of the poem. In Ireland, peat moss has been used as an alternative to coal. Cutting turf is an incredibly grueling task and the fact that Heaney claims his grandfather could cut more than any other man signifies not only the physical strength of his grandfather, but Heaney's own admiration for the hard work his grandfather was able to do by himself.

He then shares an anecdote with his reader as he describes encountering his grandfather out on the bog one day. The speaker describes a day when he brought a bottle of milk to his grandfather. Heaney's grandfather barely stops his work, quickly drinking the milk and then returning to digging and cutting.

Stanza Seven

The seventh stanza returns the reader to the present day, as the speaker sits at his writing desk.

The memories are so vivid and alive in the speaker that he can actually smell the freshly dug potatoes and the "soggy peat". He can hear the sound the peat made as it was cut. The speaker realizes that unlike his father and grandfather, he has no spade to follow in their footsteps.

Stanza Eight

What he does have, however, is revealed in the eighth and final stanza, which contains only three lines. Much is contained in these three simple lines. First, Heaney uses repetition, as once again, he describes holding his pen between his finger and thumb.

Heaney's diction here is also curious, as he uses the word "squat" to describe his instrument. While it can describe the physical appearance of the pen itself, Heaney could also be showing the connection between himself and his father and grandfather, both of whom would have to squat in order to properly dig for the potatoes and peat moss. The last line, "I'll dig with it," signifies that while Heaney realizes his instrument is different from previous generations, he is still completing an arduous task. While his father and grandfather dug for potatoes and moss, he is digging for the right word, constantly attempting to create sustenance through his words.

Historical Significance

While this poem certainly is not political in nature, it does give a glimpse into the lives of hardworking Irishmen. In previous generations, men had to dig for both food and fuel. Because Ireland does not have a wealth of coal, men often had to dig through the bogs to acquire enough peat moss that could be burned as an alternative means of fuel.

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Digging by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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Here is an analysis of the poem by Seamus Heaney. Heaney was an Irish playwright, poet, and academic; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Heaney's career was both prolific and successful. In 1966, he published his first major work, Death of a Naturalist, in which this poem is included.

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In this poem, 'Death of a Naturalist', Heaney conjures a richly evocative image of the countryside, focusing on this flax dam where all the action takes place. He creates such a sensory journey that even the most uninitiated city dweller feels a keen sense of the beating heart of the countryside. Through the eyes of a child, we sense their intrigue and excitement as he sees nature up-close and watches as tadpoles become frogs. But the poem also depicts a loss of innocence as the poet/ speaker sees the harsher side of nature and feels threatened and frightened by the end.

Context to Death of a Naturalist

Born in 1939 County Londonderry (or Derry as it is more often referred to by Nationalists) Seamus Heaney is often known as a 'farmer poet' since many of his earliest poems are based on and around the farm and neighborhood where he was raised. 'Death of a Naturalist' appeared in his first major anthology of the same name, which was published in 1966. Heaney died in 2013, aged 74.

Flax is the plant from which linen is manufactured. Sown in the spring, the plants were then harvested in summer. The plants were then bundled into sheaves and placed in a flax dam to 'rot'. The purpose of this was to rot the stems and expose the fiber within from which linen is made. A flam was a large pond, usually fed by an adjacent brook. The linen industry thrived in Northern Ireland until the mid-twentieth century when the advent of synthetic fabrics diminished its appeal. The word 'townland' is a colloquial term used to describe the farm and surrounding fields and land owned by the farmer.

You can read the whole poem here.

Structure and Form

The poem is set out in two stanzas with a distinct volta in the second, signaled by the word 'Then' to indicate a change in the poet/speaker's relationship with nature. It is written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) throughout.

Analysis of Death of a Naturalist

Stanza One

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland; green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were yellow in the sun and brown

Although this stanza focuses on the child's excitement, there are warning signs in the first line that there is a darker element to this poem. An ominous tone is created in by the use of the words 'festered', 'rotted', 'sweltered', and 'punishing'. Already there is a sense of nature at its most unforgiving, but rather than alarm the child it seems to captivate him. He watches and listens intently and doesn't seem repulsed as the 'bluebottles/Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.' The juxtaposition of the bubbles which 'gargled delicately' makes it seem like a chemistry experiment. This somewhat gruesome theme is continued by the simile 'like clotted water'; a macabre image that makes us think of blood and vampires: all fascinating to a child.

This excitement is conveyed by the superlative phrase: 'But best of all was the warm thick slobber of/Frogspawn'. The 'slobber' is doubly thrilling as not only is it and 'gunge-like' in texture, but it actually transforms into something else, which he documents in detail, tracing their evolution from 'jellied specks to 'fattening dots' to 'nimble swimming tadpoles'. Through the eyes of the speaker/poet we almost turn the pages of a science book. The alliteration in the phrase 'I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied specks' creates a jaunty tone and creates a sense of the child's delight, as his investigations are supported at home and in school by Miss Walls. He is encouraged in his pursuits as sets them around the house and at school. Childish vernacular is used as the teacher 'Miss Walls' explains about the 'mammy' frog and the 'daddy' frog. The colloquialism of 'mammy' firmly places this poem in an Irish context. The simplistic language and the repetition of 'frog' in this stanza's final sentence echoes a child reporting what he has learned in school that day.

Literary Devices in Stanza One

In the first stanza, Heaney makes such extensive use of alliteration and assonance that the language almost feels heavy and sticky, to emulate a hot summer's day on the farm. The process of rotting the flax took time, and this is suggested by how the poet has drawn out the vowels, for example in the long 'e' sounds of 'green and heavy headed' and the proliferation of 'o' sounds in line six referring to the bluebottles. The Irish countryside is damp and this sense of wetness is suggested by the phrase 'huge sods'. It is impossible to read this verse quickly, until the childlike pattern of the last sentence.

His use of enjambement and caesura also contribute to this slow-moving style. There is a sense of him sitting and watching as events unfold, as illustrated in line thirteen.

While the poem has no end rhyme in the lines there is an abundance of internal rhyme and repetition, which again create a denseness in the writing.

Stanza Two

Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

The change of tone occurs abruptly with the word 'Then'. After the languorous language of the first stanza, this verse begins with a harsh monosyllabic line: 'The one hot day when fields were rank/with cowdung'. Both 'rank' and 'dung' sound cacophonous with harsh consonance. The word 'dung' is an Anglo-Saxon word for cow manure, used colloquially in Northern Ireland.

He describes the frogs as an army, coming back to seize what was theirs. This is indicated by the word 'invaded' and reinforced by words used to suggest battle: 'cocked', 'poised' and 'grenades'. The words 'coarse croaking' sound abrasive and unpleasant, and they form a 'bass chorus'. Again the proliferation of 'o' sounds combined with the harsh 'c' shows that this is eerie and grating on the child's nerves.

Again he makes use of graphic visual imagery as we can almost feel the pulse in the toad's neck in the simile 'like a sail'. He continues to use language that a child would find entertaining, and it reads in part almost like a cartoon with the onomatopoeic 'slap' and 'plop', except where they are juxtaposed beside the words 'obscene threat'. This should be a spectacle to a child, but is instead frightening because of the number of toads and their perceived indignation at the human intrusion.

Like in the first stanza, his use of run-on lines and caesura pauses seems to slow the verse down, as though the child is rooted to the spot, taking it all in. The hyperbole of the line the 'great slime kings' could sound humorous, but placed immediately after 'I sickened, turned, and ran' we feel the child's terror. This is confirmed in the final lines when he states with certainty: 'I knew/That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.' Once more the line is sharp with monosyllabic words.

The whole poem could be seen as a metaphor for growing up, laden with imagery that could be interpreted as sexual: we sense a child's revulsion as he discovers the facts of life and his ensuing loss of innocence. He will never feel the same about the countryside after this encounter.

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Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney | Poem Analysis

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In this poem, 'Death of a Naturalist', Heaney conjures a richly evocative image of the countryside, focusing on this flax dam where all the action takes place. He creates such a sensory journey that even the most uninitiated city dweller feels a keen sense of the beating heart of the countryside.

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The poem, Follower, has many of the aspects which characterize the poems of Seamus Heaney. Having grown up in an area of Northern Ireland that greatly valued, family, hard work, and farming, Heaney's poems often reflect all of these values at once. This poem does just that. The speaker in this poem may not directly represent the poet, but the similarities are unmistakable. The speaker thinks about his childhood, and the main person in his life at that time was his father. The speaker longed to be like his father, but felt that somehow he was inherently different. Still, he followed his father around, trying his best to act like him and to work like him. He did not know exactly how his life would be influenced by the example of his father until he was old enough to look back on his life.

This poem has been analysed separately by two members of the PoemAnalysis.com team. To read the other interpretatios/analysis of this poem, please scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'Next' or Page 2.

Follower Analysis

The poem, which can be read in full here, opens up with the description of the speaker's father. He was clearly a hard worker, as he "worked with a horse-plough". One does not have to experience the farm life first hand to know that farming is back-breaking work. This man worked with a horse and plough by hand. This kind of work takes someone truly dedicated to farming. The speaker describes his father's shoulders, and they way they "globed like a full sail strung". This imagery reveals the muscles that formed from years of pure, hard work. The speaker was clearly influenced by watching his father work the horse-plough, because he remembers the minute details of it, such as the "clicking tongue" of the horse as he strained beneath the plough.

The speaker respects his father immensely, considering him an expert behind the plough. He describes the specifics of his father's job in a way that allows the reader to understand that his father's job took more than just back-breaking hard work. It took skill as well. The speaker describes the finesse behind plowing in a way that would roll the sod without breaking it, and makes the single straight lines in the field with the first attempt. This description continues to characterize the speaker as a man who takes pride in his work, is dedicated, and works hard day in and day out. The reader can quickly begin to acquire the same respect for thisman that his son has for him.

The speaker continues to describe the work his father did, and the way that he and the horse were together "the sweating team". His sweat went back into the land, so he put his sweat into his work quite literally. The speaker's father was also "mapping the furrow exactly". This description continues the characterization of the speaker's father as hard-working and skilled.

With this stanza, the speaker reveals that he is different from his father. Although he admires him greatly and tries to be like him, he seems to stumble around behind him, and he sometimes "fell...on the polished sod". At times, the speaker was allowed to ride on his father's back as he worked. This gives further insight into both the father and the son. The son, on one hand, did not seem to be inclined to the same kind of work his father seemed to love and thrive in. His father, however, was devoted to his son enough to take on the extra weight of the boy riding on his back as he ploughed the land. This reveals and devoted father and an admiring son, different as they may be.

The speaker reveals his childhood desires here, claiming that he "wanted to grow up and plough" and to be just like his dad. He wanted "to close one eye" as he focused on the detailed parts of farming life. He wanted to "stiffen [his] arm" as he went behind the plough. However, in the second part of this stanza, the speaker reveals that he never did grow up to be a farmer. He admits, "All I ever did was follow in his broad shadow round the farm" meaning that he never did tend the farm by himself. This implies that the speaker grew up to do something other than farming, even though he had always wanted to be like his father. It appears that he had always known that he was inherently different and not meant to be a farmer.

When the speaker looks back on his life, he realizes that as much as he admired his father, he was always more of a nuisance when he tried to help, always tripping and falling and "yapping". Looking back, he was aware that he never could have made the kind of farmer that his dad was. He made his own way, however, and his father's work ethic and drive did influence him as he found his own path in life. Now, as an adult, the speaker is the one to whom his father looks up. In whatever the speaker has found to do in life, it is now his father who looks up to him. His father is not experienced in his son's profession, and yet he takes an interest and "keeps stumbling" around behind him. In this turn of events, the two have switched roles. The father, now perhaps too old to farm, has taken an interest in his son's life, and the son is able to experience some of what his father had felt. The speaker says that his father, "will not go away" but the tone of the poem and this line is one of soft reminiscence, and so it seems as though he says this in a good natured way, and that he rather enjoys the way his father shows exceeding interest in his life. The tables have turned, and even though the speaker did not exactly follow in his father's footsteps, he was still greatly influenced by his father's example in his life.

Click Page 2 or Next to see a different interpretation/analysis of this poem.

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The poem, Follower, has many of the aspects which characterize the poems of Seamus Heaney. Having grown up in an area of Northern Ireland that greatly valued, family, hard work, and farming, Heaney's poems often reflect all of these values at once. This poem does just that.

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Heaney’s ‘Personal Helicon’ draws inspiration from his rural carefree childhood and intimate connection with nature.

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' Requiem for the Croppies' by Seamus Heaney is a fourteen-line sonnet that conforms to various aspects of both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan forms. The latter is traditionally divided into two halves, the first eight lines, or octet, that is followed by the sestet, a set of six lines. The rhyme scheme in the first eight lines of ' Requiem for the Croppies'does not match the traditional Petrarchan pattern of ABBAABBA, instead, it is more similar to the Shakespearean pattern ABABCDCD. Although there are some half (slant) rhymes in there as well.

The last six lines reverse though, they have variability that speaks to the looseness of the sestet in the traditional Petrarchan sonnet form. Generally in this form, the final lines can follow any number of patterns. Some of the most common are CDCDCD and CDEEDC. In this case, the lines rhyme EFEFEF.

' Requiem for the Croppies' begins with the speaker describing how he, and his companions have "greatcoats full of barley." They are on the move, or as he says, "on the run". There is no time for them to strike camp, and there are also no kitchens for them to cook in. The speaker implies that they are being attacked and are forced to flee in their own lands. He is hoping to draw the reader's attention to the aggressive nature of the British forces. These lines also suggest that the rebellion is not as organized as it could be.

In the second quatrain, the speaker notes that the soldiers do everything they can to fight off the British. Although they are disorganized, they continually try new tactics. These are not ultimately successful as the final lines discuss the slaughter of these men at Vinegar Hill. The poem ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that the men, or others like them, would in the future once more take up the cause and fight back against the oppressive British regime.

You can read the full poem here and more Seamus Heaney poems here.

The poem was written in 1962 and speaks about the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This was an uprising against the British rule of Ireland, lead by The United Irishmen. These fighters had been influenced by the American and French revolutions. The main reason for this rebellion was their lack of influence over the British establishment that ruled them. The uprising was eventually defeated by the British forces, resulting in a death toll estimated to be somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000.

Additionally, before beginning this piece a reader should know that the word "croppies," included very prominently in the title, references the rebels who were marked by their very short hair. This word gives the reader much of what they need to know about the poem. Especially when it is tied together with "requiem," a word used to refer to a token of remembrance, or more specifically, a kind of Catholic mass for the souls of the dead.

Detailed Analysis

Lines 1-4

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
(...)
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

In the first lines of ' Requiem for the Croppies' the speaker is immediately identified as an Irish soldier fighting in the Rebellion of 1798. He describes how he and his companions have "greatcoats full of barely." This line speaks to the time period that the rebellion was taking place in and the style of the uniform. A greatcoat, which is also known as a "watchcoat" was most popular during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The fact that this man and those with him have "barley" in their pockets speaks to the nature of their days. They are on the move, or as he states, "on the run". There is no time for them to strike camp, and there are also no kitchens for them to cook in. This suggests that they are just subsisting on barely alone. The ellipses at the ends of lines one and two imply that the speaker is distracted, moving from thought to thought, just as he and his compatriots are moving from place to place.

In the third line, there is an interesting moment in which the speaker draws attention to the fact that he is living this way in his "own country". They are being attacked and are forced to flee in their own lands. The speaker is hoping to draw the reader's attention to the aggressive nature of the British forces. These lines also hint at the fact that the rebellion is not as organized as it could be.

The fourth line states that the priest is in the "ditches with the tramp". Usually these two people would be separate, but in the face of adversity, everyone has come together.

Lines 5-8

A people hardly marching... on the hike...
(...)
And stampede cattle into infantry,

There are more ellipses in the fifth line of ' Requiem for the Croppies'. Here, the speaker describes how his group is "hardly marching...on the hike." They don't seem to be making much progress and are perhaps at risk in their current formation. The fact that they are spoken of as being on a "hike" rather than marching with purpose doesn't bode well.

Despite the ramshackle nature of their organization, they try "new tactics...every day". They're doing everything they can to defeat the British. The next lines, seven, eight, and nine describe what some of these tactics are. They use a "pike" or a pointed steel-headed weapon on a long shaft, to cut "through reins and rider". This refers to the British soldiers on horseback. They also "stampede cattle into infantry". Taken at face value, this line suggests that they forced cows to run into the British infantrymen.They also end up "retreat[ing] through hedges where cavalry must be thrown."

Lines 9-12

Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
(...)
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

The speaker goes on to use another ellipse heavy line. This one, which references "Vinegar Hill" is the "fatal conclave," or meeting. The word "conclave" also has religious connotations as it refers to the assembly of cardinals for the election of a new pope. It was at Vinegar Hill that the rebellion came to an end. It was on June 21st 1798 that the Irish and English forces had their final battle of the rebellion. The last line of this tercet returns to the poem to the agricultural imagery that was present at the beginning. Thousands of men died, "shaking scythes at cannon[s]".

Lines 13-14

They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.

The "hillside" in the final lines of ' Requiem for the Croppies' "blushed" as it was tinted red by the blood of those lost. It was "soaked" in the loss of the soldier's "broken wave". The two halves of this line are connected through the water imagery. It suggests that the entire rebellion was broken against the shore, and split up into nothing.

The men were buried informally, without coffin or shroud. The last line is moving, and ultimately hopeful. It connects the poem back up to the beginning. The speaker states that months later, in August, the barely the men carried in their pockets "grew up out of [their] grave". This speaks to a new life, and a new opportunity, sometime in the future to live and fight again.

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Requiem for the Croppies by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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' Requiem for the Croppies' by Seamus Heaney is a fourteen-line sonnet that conforms to various aspects of both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan forms. The latter is traditionally divided into two halves, the first eight lines, or octet, that is followed by the sestet, a set of six lines.

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It is a three-part poem divided into a total of eleven 'The Tollund Man' by Seamus Heaney was published in his collection Wintering Out. stanzas, all of which contain four lines. Heaney did not choose to give this poem a specific rhyme scheme, but the lines are all of similar lengths.

by Seamus Heaney uses the discovery of the Tollund Man to speak on the larger issues of violence during "the Troubles".

In the first lines of the poem, the speaker gives a few basic details about the mummified man, such as what he was wearing and where he was found. He also expresses his desire to visit the man, comparing the journey to a pilgrimage.

In the next section, he starts to compare the preserved man to those who have fought and died in Northern Ireland. The poem concludes with the speaker predicting what it would be like to visit the area. He decides he'd feel sad, but also very much at home.

You can read the full poem and more Seamus Heaney poems here.

The poem was inspired by a sealed and preserved prehistoric man discovered in a bog in the Jutland Peninsula, Denmark in 1950. From what scientists could learn from the body it was determined that the man had lived during the 4th century BCE. Scientists believe the man was part of a ritual of human sacrifice and died by strangulation.

The body caught the public's attention because of the quality of its preservation. All the facial features are distinguishable, as was the man's dying expression. In fact, the body was mistaken for a recent murder victim when it was first discovered.

As the poem progresses from a fairly straightforward description of the Tollund Man it becomes clear that the body symbolizes a number of important things to Heaney. Due to the nature of the man's death, these include sacrifice and devoutness. Before his death, the Tollund Man believed that his sacrifice would benefit his people in some critical way. He gave up his life in order so those he cared about might have better lives. It is through this lens that Heaney considers the man and the land in which he was found.

He compares the sacrifice the Tollund Man-made for his people to that the Irish are engaging in. They too hope that their lives might mean something and in the end benefit those they love, their larger community, and their country.

In the first stanza of 'The Tollund Man,' the speaker begins by declaring that one day he's going to go to "Aarhus". With some contextual details it quickly becomes clear that this is a place name, referencing the second largest city in Denmark, and a location very near to the museum in which the body of the Tollund Man is on display. Heaney's speaker addresses Aarhus as if it is a site of pilgrimage.

He intends to go there, and engage in the appreciation of the Tollund Man and of his symbolic and historical importance. He outlines in the next lines some of the man's features he's going to see. They include his brown coloured head, the "mild pods of his eyelids" and his "pointed skin cap". A reader should take note of the use of alliteration in these three lines as Heaney uses and reuses words beginning with the letter "p".

In the second stanza, Heaney's speaker goes into more detail about where the man was found, what his original environment was like, how it impacted his body, and how he physically appeared when he was discovered.

Heaney first discusses the location where the body was discovered. The landscape was a flat, relatively deserted bogland in the countryside. Very simply, Heany's speaker adds that scientists were able to determine the man's last meal was still in his stomach. It was a "gruel of winter seeds". The meal was very basic and is used in this poem to humanize the man who is so distant from modern readers. It is also a very interesting and vibrant detail that helps one to better understand the situation. Additionally, these lines tell the reader something about the man's environment, the season he was living in, and the resources he had access to.

Stanza Three

In the third stanza, he describes how the Tollund Man was wearing nothing, "except for / The cap". This is a reference to the sheepskin cap that the man was wearing when he was discovered. There were no other clothing items on the body. But, those who removed the body from the bog discovered that there was a noose around the man's neck. At one point, scientists thought the man died by hanging, but the cause of death was later reassessed and determined to be strangulation.

The speaker returns to describing how he intends to address the man by saying that he's going to stand "a long time" staring at this preserved fragment of history. There is a bit of ambiguity in the fourth line of the third stanza as the speaker states that someone, either himself, the Tollund Man, or both are the "bridegroom to the goddess". The Tollund Man was granted something like eternal life by the unknown "goddess". But, at the same time, considering the first lines of the text which compare the speaker's intended trip to a pilgrimage, one might want to consider the speaker's own relationship to a higher power.

Stanza Four

In the fourth stanza, it becomes clear that at least since most directly Heaney was intending the Tollund Man to be the bridegroom. He describes how this unknown goddess took control of the man. She "tightened her torc on him". A torc is defined as an ornament one wears around their neck. In this instance, it is described as something like a collar from which the man could be controlled.

Heaney's speaker also states that the goddess "opened up her fen". This is a reference to a marshy area of land, such as that which the body was discovered in. She absorbed him within it. The metaphorical goddess used the "dark juices" of the marsh to preserve his body. He compares this preservation to the way in which saint's body parts are preserved throughout the world, and commonly kept within reliquaries.

Stanza Five

The next lines are in reference to the land itself, and to the fact that this area of bog played host to more than one of these rediscovered, ancient bodies. He concludes this first section of the poem by stating that this man, who is for any number of reasons important to the speaker, is now resting at Aarhus.

The second part of the Tollund Man is shorter than the first, containing only three stanzas, each of which is still four lines long. He begins with a striking statement, saying that he "could risk blasphemy". He's willing to go against the tenants of the church and "consecrate the cauldron bog". This is of course another reference to the land in which the man was found, and relates back to Heany's previous comments regarding his pilgrimage to the location, and the divine qualities of the preserved, immortal-seeming, man.

It is at this point that the poet turns the poem to focus on a topic that's very common within his cannon, the troubles in Northern Ireland. He imagines that the ground the man was found in, as well as that which the others (known as bod bodies) were discovered, could return the lost Irish citizens to their families.

The second stanza of the section goes into more detail. The speaker wants the "scattered, ambushed / Flesh of labourers". to be returned from the ground. At the same time, he has no hope that this will be the case. He is simply able to draw a direct comparison between the ground in Denmark and the ground he walks on in Ireland. Both landscapes play host to a number of lost bodies,. There are other more direct connections when one considers the more complex symbolism around the Tollund Man and his sacrifice.

He represents a desire to better one's community through the giving of one's own life. The Tollund Man died through ritual human sacrifice. It is unlikely that scientists will ever know for sure what reason the Tollund Man gave his life. Perhaps though it was to do with unfavourably changing weather patterns or generally bettering the community's way of life. Heaney is able to relate the sacrifice to the continual sacrifice of Irish men and women in Northern Ireland. These fighters who are dying all around him are also giving their lives for a common cause. They too fill the ground at his feet.

Stanza Three

In the second and third stanza of this section, it is very clear that Heaney wants to paint a simple portrait of his people. They are not skilled fighters who enjoy engaging in battle. Instead, they are an uncomplicated group of farmers and labourers, brothers and sons, who want nothing more than their freedom.

The third part of this poem also contains three stanzas. In the first Heaney predicts that while traveling through Denmark he's going to feel something of the man's "sad freedom". He thinks about the man riding through the countryside, experiencing the last moments of his life. He knows a lot about what this means, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Heaney has also experienced the desire to make the ultimate sacrifice for those he loves.

In the second stanza, he recites three different names. The first is recognizable, but the next two, "Grauballe, Nebelgard," are new. They both reference other locations in Denmark and which similar bog bodies were discovered. He is considering what it would be look at the "pointing hand /of country people". Their hands are pointing, as if in judgment or declaration. He is clearly relating them to his people, who are in a continual struggle for their personal rights. But, Heaney also makes sure to mention that this is not his land, he does not know their "tongue".

Stanza Three

In the last four lines he predicts that when he goes out into Jutland, the area of Denmark in which the body was found, and travels to the "old man killing parishes", he will feel lost. The parishes are another religious reference in connection to the bogland. He predicts that he will at once feel unhappy and very much at home.

This conclusion falls in perfectly with the rest of the poem. Heaney has been discussing the similarities between the sacrifice of this ancient man and the sacrifice of his own countrymen.

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The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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It is a three-part poem divided into a total of eleven 'The Tollund Man' by Seamus Heaney was published in his collection Wintering Out. stanzas, all of which contain four lines. Heaney did not choose to give this poem a specific rhyme scheme, but the lines are all of similar lengths.

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'Punishment' is featured in , a poetry collection published in 1975. North seeks images and symbols of the past to convey the violence and political conflicts of the end of the twentieth century. The collection has two main sections. The first part is more symbolic and talks about ancient matters, as Greek myths, bog bodies, and the Vikings, among others. The second part, on the other hand, describes life during The Troubles, a conflict in Northern Ireland that took place between 1968 and 1998.

'Punishment' was inspired by bog bodies. Bog Queen, The Grauballe Man, and Strange Fruit are other poems of the collection that were also inspired by bog bodies. 'Punishment', in particular, is written to Windeby I, a bog body found in Germany that was believed to be a girl. In the poem, the lyrical voice imagines the life of a girl charged with adultery. This ancient form of brutality relates to that of the end of the twentieth century and The Troubles in Ireland, relating past and present through an act of violence. 'Punishment' consists of 11 quatrains with no fixed rhyme scheme. Lines vary between two and eight syllables and there is a great use of enjambment lines.

Seamus Heaney indicated that this poem was based on personal experience. In an interview with the Paris Review he said about 'Punishment': "It's a poem about standing by as the IRA tar and feather these young women in Ulster. But it's also about standing by as the British torture people in barracks and interrogation centers in Belfast. It's about standing between those two forms of affront". You can read the full poem here.

Punishment Analysis

First Stanza

In this first quatrain, the lyrical voice imagines a girl. Throughout the poem, he/she will depict the stages leading to the execution of this young girl accused of adultery. The lyrical voice creates a vivid image, as he/she senses how she is brought to her death ("I can feel the tug/of the halter at the nape"). Notice the emphasis on the senses and how the lyrical voice feels the girl and "the wind/on her naked front." The lyrical voice, thus, appears to be watching the girl from the outside as she is taken to the execution site.

Second Stanza

The second quatrain continues to describe the girl. The lyrical voice mentions her naked torso and how she walks towards the execution site. The girl is described as weak and fragile, as she stands in the wind and trembles. Notice how the effect of the wind in the girl's body is depicted, by the color of her nipples ("amber beads") and the trembling ("it shakes the frail rigging/of her ribs"). The lyrical voice pictures a vivid image of this girl in order to describe her suffering.

Third Stanza

The third quatrain furthers the description of the girl's death. The stanza begins like the first one, emphasizing that the lyrical voice sees the girl in a certain situation ("I can see her drowned"). Now, the lyrical voice pictures the girl dying and depicts this by illustrating her body in a realistic way. The word "bog" is highly symbolic and the images that follow explain how she was drowned to death (by the "weighing stone" and "the floating rods and boughs" keeping her in place). There are a great number of vowel sounds in the stanza, which create a certain musicality that goes along with the images created.

Fourth Stanza

The fourth quatrain continues with the scene of the girl's death. The lyrical voice explains her punishments and the consequences of it. As in the previous stanza, the lyrical voice creates powerful images in order to illustrate the young girl's terrible destiny in a very graphic and authentic way. The description of the girl as "barked sapling" emphasizes her youth and how she was "dug up". "oak-bone" and "brain-firkin" function as compressed similes which further the description of the girl's body and her bones after her death.

Fifth Stanza

The fifth quatrain focuses on how the girl's body pictures her as a prisoner. The lyrical voice focuses on the details of the girl's body. Her head was shaved "like a stubble of black corn", as a punishment for adultery, and she is blindfolded ("her blindfold a soiled bandage") and has a ring around her neck, as all prisoners do. However, "her noose a ring" could also mean the entrapment of married life, which the girl was condemned to.

Sixth Stanza

The sixth quatrain expands on the symbolism of the ring/noose. The lyrical voice suggests that the ring is an element that stores death and "the memories of love". This is a complex and intense image which is emphasized by the last two lines. Then, the lyrical voice addresses the subject of adultery directly by calling the girl "Little adulteress", accentuating her youth and her fragility. Moreover, the punishment is also mentioned directly. From the previous stanza, there is a sort of link between the quatrains as one continues the message of the one before. This helps to provide a sort of unity in the poem, but, also, to accentuate every quatrain as an evocative portrait that provides a bigger scene. Notice, also, how the images depicted get more graphic and more dramatic with the stanzas in order to increase the dramatic tension in the text.

Seventh Stanza

The seventh quatrain talks about the past state of the young girl. The lyrical voice remembers that she was beautiful before, with her "flaxen-haired,/undernourished" and her "tar-back face". These images contrast with those depicted before, as the girl, although in a past state, is mentioned as beautiful. The last line of the stanza is crucial because the tone of the poem shifts and the lyrical voice feels a sort of pity towards the girl. Moreover, the girl is mentioned with the possessive "My" and she is described, again, as a fragile victim ("poor scapegoat").

Eighth Stanza

The eighth quatrain presents a shift in the lyrical voice's position. Throughout the stanzas, the lyrical voice described the girl from a distant point, but, in this particular quatrain, he/she relates sentimentally to the girl ("I almost love you"). The lyrical voice also mentions that he/she is "the artful voyeur", a role which implies that he saw her death and did nothing to stop it ("the stones of silence"). The tone in this stanza is more intense, as the lyrical voice puts him/herself and his/her feelings in the stanza.

Ninth Stanza

The ninth quatrain continues with the description of the girl's body. The lyrical voice goes back to depicting the remains of the young girl's body ("of your brain's exposed/and darkened combs"). The girl appears to be completely exposed; there is little dignity in her death. Furthermore, the lyrical voice portrays the girl's remains in a very powerful and descriptive way.

Tenth Stanza

The tenth quatrain shifts back to the lyrical voice's position. This stanza is a critical part of the poem as the lyrical voice admits his/her feeling of guilt ("I who have stood dumb"). The lyrical voice feels guilty because he/she didn't do anything and watched the girl being punished. The young girl's helplessness and her death can be related, because of the strong historical background of the poem, to that of the Irish women in modern society.

Eleventh Stanza

The final quatrain continues with the message of the previous one. The tone of the poem shifts and becomes a sort of confession. The lyrical voice refers to the barbarities of the modern world ("civilized outrage") and how to reverse them ("tribal, intimate revenge"). Thus, the poem finishes with a dramatic message. As already mentioned, the poem is deeply related to historical events that happened in Ireland during the end of the twentieth century and here Heaney recalls his own reactions and denounces that particular time.

About Seamus Heaney

Seamus Justin Heaney was born in 1939 and died in 2013. He was an Irish poet, playwright, lecturer, and translator. In the 1960s Seamus Heaney became a lecturer in St College in Belfast after attending Queen's University Belfast. His most notable works are: 'Death of a Naturalist,' 'North,' 'Field Work,' 'The Spirit Level,' 'Beowulf,' 'District and Circle,' and 'Human chain.' Moreover, during his lifetime, Seamus Heaney received many awards such as the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E.M. Foster Award (1975), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1995), the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1996), the Saoi of Aosdána (1997), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001) and the T. S. Eliot Prize (2006), among many others. Explore more Seamus Heaney poems.

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Punishment by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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'Punishment' is featured in , a poetry collection published in 1975. North seeks images and symbols of the past to convey the violence and political conflicts of the end of the twentieth century. The collection has two main sections. The first part is more symbolic and talks about ancient matters, as Greek myths, bog bodies, and the Vikings, among others.

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'A Constable Calls' is the second in a six-part series known as "Singing School". It is the perfect example of the verse that made Heaney so popular in his native Ireland and then all over the world. The poem tells a very simple story using colloquial diction and a clear syntactic style that all readers should be able to understand. It addresses themes of fear, oppression, and everyday concerns of normal people, while also crafting a mood interpretably by anyone who approaches the narrative.

Summary of A Constable Calls

'A Constable Calls' by Seamus Heaney depicts a story from Heaney's own youth in which a constable interrogated his father about what he owed in taxes.

The poem is told from Heaney's perspective, as a young boy, and a grown man looking back on the events. He senses the tension in the room, analyzes the reason for the policeman's visit, and even takes on some of his father's guilt at hiding crops. The policeman quizzes his father over what he did or did not report in taxes and luckily, leaves without realizing there was something he didn't mention.

You can read the full poem here.

Structure and Poetic Techniques in A Constable Calls

'A Constable Calls' by Seamus Heaney is a nine stanza poem that's separated into sets of four lines, known as quatrains. These quatrains do not follow a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. The lines are similar in length though, ranging from around four to nine syllables each.

Heaney also makes use of several poetic techniques in 'A Constable Calls'. These include alliteration, allusion, and enjambment. The first, alliteration, occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same letter. For example, "slightly sweating" in stanza three and "buttoned," "braid," and "butt" in stanza five.

An allusion is an expression that's meant to call something specific to mind without directly stating it. In the first stanza the poet hints at danger by describing the "dynamo" as "cocked back". This alludes to the action of a gun, and changes the mood from curious to foreboding.

Another important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. There are examples throughout 'A Constable Calls' such as in the transitions between lines two and three of the first stanza and one and two of the third.

Analysis of A Constable Calls

Stanza One

In the first stanza of 'A Constable Calls' the speaker, who is Heaney as a young child, begins by describing someone's bicycle. It is leaning against the window-sill of his house. These lines are straightforward, descriptive, and clear. The young speaker is obviously curious about this bike and understands it enough to be able to describe it in detail. He takes note of the mudguard and of the "black handlegrips". These grips are "fat," alluding to a bike that's heavy-duty and built with purpose.

Stanza Two

It's in the second stanza of 'A Constable Calls' that the mood changes from curious to foreboding. As the boy looks closer he sees that the "dynamo" is gleaming and cocked back" like a gun. This alludes to the purpose and danger inherent in this person's visit to his home. They aren't there for a purely social occasion or to share good news.

While the bike is stationary right now, Heaney hints at the power that was previously running through it. The "boot of the law" used to be on the "pedal treads" but for the moment they are "relieved" of its pressure and hanging loose. It becomes clear that this bike belongs to a law enforcement officer of some kind.

Stanza Three

The narrative of 'A Constable Calls' jumps into the house where the policeman is sitting. The man is in a chair with his "cap" on the floor next to him. These details are unimportant in the larger scheme of things but they address the mood of the scene as the young boy slowly becomes aware of what's going on. Step by step he becomes acquainted with the scene. Heaney takes note of the line his cap left through his "slightly sweating hair" and a reader is left, for now, to wonder what's going on here.

Stanza Four

The fourth stanza comes less from a young boy's perspective and more from Heaney's contemporary mind as he has come to understand the pressures his father was under. The policeman is there to check up on his father and make sure that he has paid all the appropriate taxes on what his land produces. This is referred to as the "tillage returns". It is addressed in "acres, roods, and perches".

Stanza Five

The first line of the fifth stanza of 'A Constable Calls' is short, to the point, and addresses everything the father is concerned with at this moment. He's scared that he's going to be found out he was, in fact, hiding parts of his production. Math and fear are intertwined together here as he tries to convince the policeman.

The young speaker is stuck "starting at the polished holster" of the policeman's revolver. He too feels the tension of the moment and knows that his family could be in danger.

Stanza Six

The next lines of 'A Constable Calls' contain a bit of the conversation between the policeman and the father. He suggests that perhaps the father forgot to count some of his crops. The father replies, "No". Heaney knows this isn't entirely true as there was a "line / Of turnips where the seed ran out / In the potato field".

Stanza Seven

His fear increases as he knows this piece of information is very close to being discovered. He takes on his father's guilt in this moment. The young Heaney starts to think the worst. He imagines the "black hole in the barracks" where his father, or even Heaney himself, could end up.

The policeman was satisfied by the father's answers. He stands up in the fourth line. Heaney enjambs the line right as he shifts the "baton-case". This alludes one final time to the danger the could rain down upon them.

Stanza Eight

The last two stanzas of 'A Constable Calls' depict the policeman rearranging his belt, book and cap and saying goodbye to Heaney. The ledger in which the policeman had been noting the figure is described as a "domesday book". This is a reference to a manuscript of the "Great Survey" of England in the mid-1000s. It was put together to determine what taxes were owed by those living under King Edward the Confessor. The word "domesday" is the Middle English version of "doomsday".

Stanza Nine

The final stanza of 'A Constable Calls' takes the reader back outside and to the bike that began the entire narrative. The policeman gets back on, snapping the "carrier spring / Over the ledger" and moves away. Heaney makes use of repetition in the last lines as the bike's spokes "tick" into the distance. The relief is only temporary as the man is sure to be back again next year.

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Analysis of A Constable Calls by Seamus Heaney | Poem Analysis

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'A Constable Calls' is the second in a six-part series known as "Singing School". It is the perfect example of the verse that made Heaney so popular in his native Ireland and then all over the world. The poem tells a very simple story using colloquial diction and a clear syntactic style that all readers should be able to understand.

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'The Strand at Lough Beg' first appeared in Seamus Heaney's Field Work in 1979. Within the poem, Heaney delves into themes of violence, family, and nature. His tone is serious, solemn, and caring as he speaks about Colum's dark final moments and the proper burial and respect he'd like to give him in the setting of Lough Beg. The mood is dark but becomes more hopeful towards the end of the poem.

' The Strand at Lough Beg' by Seamus Heaney is a moving eulogy to Heaney's cousin who was murdered during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Heaney takes the reader through the frightening last moments of Colum McCartney's life with as much detail as possible. He also speaks about Colum's passivity, good nature, hard-working attitude, and innocence in the conflict at large. His death remained something of a mystery to Heaney. He was only aware of a few details about where his cousin was killed and there are many unanswered questions that he airs in the text.

Despite their family not fighting on either side of the conflict, they've been caught up in it. In the second half of the poem, there's a greater focus on the strand at Lough Beg. Humankind and our connection to the natural world are emphasized and the violence that we're capable of, condemned. Heaney crafts a beautiful ending to this piece that sees his cousin respectfully and carefully returned to the earth. There is peace at the end of what was a violent death.

You can read the full poem here and more Seamus Heaney poems here.

' The Strand at Lough Beg' by Seamus Heaney is a three- stanza poem that is separated into one set of sixteen lines, one set of twelve, and a concluding set of sixteen. The lines do not follow a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern, but there are a few examples of rhyme within the text. For instance, the endings of lines fourteen and sixteen of the first stanza with "knew" and "yew" or the words "round" and "ground" in lines ten and twelve of the second stanza.

Epigraph

Before beginning, it is important to consider the dedication an epigraph at the beginning of 'The Strand at Lough Beg'. Heaney dedicated this particular piece to "Colum McCartney," his cousin. He was murdered in the summer of 1975 in a random act of violence between Catholics and Protestants. The "you" referenced in the lines of 'The Strand at Lough Beg' is Heaney's cousin. The poem details the time right before the man's death when he was about to depart on a journey to Newtownhamilton as well as Heaney's reaction to the news.

The epigraph comes right after the dedication and is made up of a quote from the first canto of Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio, the first book of The Divine Comedy. The quote is clearly applicable to Heaney's own work and reads:

All round this little island, on the strand

Far down below there, where the breakers strive

Grow the tall rushes from the oozy sand.

Poetic Techniques

Heaney makes use of several poetic techniques in 'The Strand at Lough Beg'. These include alliteration, enjambment, simile, and caesura. The first, alliteration, is seen several times throughout the poem. For instance, "snapping and squealing" in line eight of the first stanza and "where we work our way" in line four of the third stanza.

Caesura occurs when a line is split in half, sometimes with punctuation, sometimes not. The use of punctuation in these moments creates a very intentional pause in the text. A reader should consider how the pause influences the rhythm of one's reading and how it might proceed an important turn or transition in the text. Take a look at line nine of the first stanza as an example. It reads: "What blazed ahead of you? A faked road block?"

Another important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. For example, the transition between lines seven and eight of the first stanza and eight and nine of the second.

A simile is a comparison between two unlike things that uses the words "like" or "as". A poet uses this kind of figurative language to say that one thing is similar to another, not like metaphor, that it "is" another. There is one example in line five and six of the third stanza "Like a dull blade with its edge / Honed bright". Here, the speaker is comparing Lough Beg and its landscape to a knife.

Detailed Analysis

Stanza One

Lines 1-8

In the first lines of 'The Strand at Lough Beg' the speaker, who is very likely Seamus Heaney himself, jumps right into describing the actions of his cousin, Colum McCartney. All that's clear at this point is that the man is "Leaving" one place behind and journeying onto another. The "glow of filling stations" is receding into the distance, as is the light from a few street lamps. The man is driving up "the hills toward Newtownhamilton" in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

One of the landmarks that Heaney gives the reader to mark his cousin's drive is the Fews Forest, a large conifer plantation. It's night while this journey is taking place and the darkness of the sky and the forest are juxtaposed with the meager light of the filling stations and street lamps. He's leaving what light there is behind and moving into the darkness. The symbolism present here cannot be ignored.

Heaney depicts the landscape in the next lines, relating it to the flight of "Sweeney," a hero from Middle Irish writings. By mentioning Sweeney in relation to McCartney, Heaney is suggesting the two are similar. McCartney's fate, which is soon to fall upon him, is not a good one. He is a martyr in the same sense as the now mythologized character is. There is a terrifying image in the next lines of "bloodied heads" and "dogs' eyes in a demon pack". These followed Sweeney in a similar way to how McCartney's fate follows him.

Lines 9-14

Within line nine Heaney asks a series of questions. He expresses the fact that he doesn't know exactly what happened next. "What," he inquires of his cousin, "blazed ahead of you?"Because of the facts of this man's death, the reader is missing just as much information as Heaney is. Some information came to light, but not everything a concerned family member might want to know.

In the next lines of 'The Strand at Lough Beg,' the speaker gets into a bit of the detail of what might've happened to McCartney. He might've been stopped on the road and heard the "sudden break" and seen "heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun". But Heaney doesn't know. This is all speculation. The alliteration in these lines is powerful. The double "h" in "heads hooded" starts a rhythm that's continued in the use of consonance and the repetition of the "d" sound.

Alternatively, Heaney poses, maybe he was driving and he saw "tailing headlights" that suddenly pulled out into the road and "flagged" him down. These are frightening scenes, made more so by their mystery and how they are set in the middle of the night. In the fourteenth line, Heaney alludes to McCartney being lost and disorientated. Maybe he was somewhere he wasn't known or where he'd never been. This makes his death all the more moving as a reader has to contend with the image of a lost, lonely man facing his end alone.

Lines 15-16

Next, within line fifteen, Heaney moves away from what's mysterious and into what's known. The cousin, and Heaney himself, knew "The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg, /Church Island's spire". Lough Beg is a small lake in Northern Ireland and Church Island an island on the lake where visitors can see the ruins of an old church. The familiarity of this place, and the way it is juxtaposed against the horror of the man's nighttime death, is striking. Its very different nature, or what should be its different nature, is emphasized through "its soft treeline of yew".

Stanza Two

Lines 1-6

The second stanza is shorter at only twelve lines. Here, the speaker describes what it's like around Lough Beg. "There," he said, "you used to hear shots fired behind the house". The sounds would echo out before it was time to get up and remind McCartney of the ever-present violence in Northern Ireland at that time. Heaney describes McCartney passively. He was scared to "find spent cartridges" and to know for sure what was going on around the strand. His passivity is emphasized through the seventh line of this stanza.

The cartridges, when he did find them, were "Acrid, brassy, genital, ejected". These words allude to poignant and potent violence.

Lines 7-12

The rest of this stanza helps the reader understand how McCartney, his family, that was so Heaney's family, were people who "fought shy". They might've talked conspiratorially and held strong opinions about what's going on in the world, but they would not "seize the day" or get up and fight. McCartney's and Heaney's family members are described as "herders," or people who take care of livestock, as well as "scullions" or servants who worked at menial tasks in the kitchen.

Clearly, Heaney did not see himself as originating from violent people. They are "Slow arbitrators of the burial ground". A reader should be reminded throughout the second half of the second stanza that McCartney had done nothing wrong. He was not fighting on either side of the conflict and shouldn't have been attacked.

Stanza Three

Lines 1-6

The third stanza is sixteen lines, like the first, and begins with a lovely description of Lough Beg. In these lines, Heaney describes how the cattle grazed in amongst a thick and deep layer of mist. The scene is peaceful and alludes to a time in which violence did not control everyone's choices. The "b" consonant sound is repeated in the third line with the word "unbewildered". Heaney speaks about the cows and how they consider the world. They are not "bewildered" by what's happened, suggesting that Heaney is.

The cows look up to "where we work our way through squeaking sedge". He recalls how they'd walk through the grasses in the early morning and the water/dew would squeak under their feet.

Heaney uses a simile to compare Lough Beg to a knife. It is "like a dull blade with its edge / Honed bright". It "shines under the haze" of the morning. The lake is a strip of brightness in amongst the mist.

Lines 7-16

In the final lines, the speaker narrates what happens moment by moment. He hears McCartney stop walking behind him. It's the silence of his "sweeping...feet" that draws Heaney's attention. When he looks behind, he sees the man "With blood and roadside muck in" his hair and eyes. He's imagining his cousin's death and the way that he would've liked to in those moments have cared for his body.

Heaney weaves the man's death in with the grasses of Lough Beg and creates for him a worthy place of rest. In these lines, the reality is blurred with a fantasy. Heaney has already stated that he wasn't with McCartney when he died, and doesn't know exactly what happened. These lines are likely a fabrication meant to eulogize the man and rewrite the final moments of his life.

Heaney describes how he'd clean the body with moss and lift McCartney so that he was lying flat "With rushes" around him. Lastly, with the bright "green" imagery continuing, Heaney describes braiding McCartney a cloak, or "scapular" to wear over his shroud.

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The Strand at Lough Beg by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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'The Strand at Lough Beg' first appeared in Seamus Heaney's Field Work in 1979. Within the poem, Heaney delves into themes of violence, family, and nature. His tone is serious, solemn, and caring as he speaks about Colum's dark final moments and the proper burial and respect he'd like to give him in the setting of Lough Beg.

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' Casualty' by Seamus Heaney is a three-part poem that is made up of stanzas of different lengths. The three parts were divided up by the poet with Roman numerals in the original text. There is no single pattern of rhyme or rhythm in this text, but that doesn't mean that it lacks unity. The sections, although made up of different length stanzas, contain around the same number of lines. Heaney also makes use of rhyme at the end of lines, full and slant. For example, the first lines of the poem rhyme every other line, but there are also instances of half or slant rhyme in the text. Additionally, some of the lines later on rhyme in couplets, or sets of two.

Throughout the text, Heaney makes use of a number of poetic techniques in addition to rhyme and rhythm. These include alliteration and enjambment. Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same letter. For example, "surplice and soutane" in the second section and "coffin" and "coffin" a few lines later. Further one there is "braced" and "bound" as well as "Nightly" and "naturally".

Another important technique that is commonly used within poetry is enjambment. This occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point.It forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. Heaney uses this technique quite often in the poem. One strong example is in the last stanza of the first section when Heaney reveals that O'Neil was "blown to bits / Out drinking in a curfew / Others obeyed".

' Casualty' by Seamus Heaney describes the death of one of the poet's friends after the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972 in Northern Ireland.

In the first lines of the poem the speaker, who is Heaney himself, describes his friend Louis O'Neil. He often spent time by himself drinking and calling "for another rum" with his "weathered thumb". After the man was done drinking he would leave the bar wearing "wadders and a peaked cap". Heaney loved this man, and took the time throughout the poem to describe him in detail. Unfortunately, his life ended tragically in a bombing.

O'Neil was out drinking after curfew, as like a fish, he couldn't help but follow his instincts and swim towards the bar. This was soon after the deaths on Bloody Sunday and the events are connected in the speaker's mind. He describes the funerals and the solemn, yet regimented nature of the mourners. Heaney did not attend O'Neil's own funeral, but he knows what it was like. He merges the images of death and loss with those of a fishing trip the two took. The poem concludes with Heaney describing O'Neil as a "Revenant" and "Plodder through midnight rain".

You can read the full poem here.

This poem is deeply emotional. It speaks on a traumatic, history-defining event, the day in Irish history known as "Bloody Sunday". This day, 30 January 1972, is remembered for the murder of unarmed civilians during a protest march. Those injured were all Catholic and the march had been organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. Fourteen in total would die. Those involved in the slaughter were British soldiers and they shot people fleeing, and even those trying to help the wounded. The same battalion of soldiers and been involved in two other controversial shoots in the previous months.

It was not until 2010 that the killings were officially labeled as "unjustified" and that the prime minister at the time, David Cameron, made a formal apology.

Part I

Stanza One

Lines 1-15

In the first lines of 'Casualty' the speaker begins by referring to a man. Although the man is not named within the text, he is known to be an Irishman named Louis O'Neil. The speaker describes him, at first, through his drinking habits.He often spent time by himself drinking and calling "for another run" with his "weathered thumb". From these lines, the reader can infer that he is old, and is a long-time customer of one particular establishment. This is further emphasized by the fact that O'Neill did not have to raise his voice to get another drink. Anyone working in the bar knew exactly what he wanted. In another instance, the speaker describes how O'Neill is able to justify the lift of his eyes "order a quick stout".

Heaney continues on, describing how after the man was done drinking he would leave the bar wearing "wadders and a peaked cap". Often when he left the bar it would be dark, and he would be forced to contend with a shower of rain. The speaker emphasizes how the man was weathered, a "natural for work" and someone who got financial help or a "dole" from the government.

Lines 16-20

I loved his whole manner,
(...)
And turned observant back.

After making the statements about O'Neil's personality and evening habits, Heaney states that he "loved [ONeil's] whole manner". In the last lines of the stanza, he adds a few more details about this "manner" and what he found appealing about it. He thought of O'Neil as "sure-footed but sly". He also had a way of not calling attention to himself and even when his back was turned he was observant.

Through a single stanza, Heaney is able to paint a clear picture of who this man was. This is important, for as the poem continues a reader's empathy for the character involved is of the utmost importance. As is the realism with which Heaney speaks on O'Neil and the events surrounding him.

Stanza Two

In the second stanza of the first section, it is confirmed that the speaker is meant to be Seamus Haney himself. He describes how when speaking with O'Neill the man tried to understand the writer's life, but failed. The speaker outlines how they were times that O'Neill tried to engage in poetry. These moments occur when the man was,

Too busy with his knife

At a tobacco plug

And not meeting my eye,

In these lines, Heaney is referring to the way that O'Neil pressed his chewing tobacco is into a square, brick-like shape. Rather than spending time talking about this part of his life that the man didn't understand, Heaney does his best to quietly and politely change the topic to something more common. He mentions eels, the horse and cart, or "the Provisionals" as examples. The last statement is a reference to one group of the IRA army. The Provisionals, compared with the Officials, were the dominant grouping of members.

Stanza Three

In the third stanza, there is a transition from the mundane talk of the pub to the main event which inspired Seamus Heaney to compose this poem. One day, the man was out past curfew, which others obeyed, and he was "blown to bits". This occurred,

three nights

After they shot dead

The thirteen men in Derry.

This is a clear reference to Bloody Sunday that occurred on January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland. British soldiers shot 28 unarmed civilians during a protest march against internment. Of the people shot, thirteen were killed immediately and a fourteenth died later. In the last lines of this stanza, Heaney uses soccer/football scoring, as well as the abbreviation for "parachute regiment," to speak about the deaths.

Part II

Stanza One

In the second section of the poem, the speaker describes the imagery on the day of the funeral for those killed on Bloody Sunday. It was cold, windblown, and filled with a "raw silence". One powerful image is of the "surplice and soutane" or the loose garments worn by the priest. These were moving in the wind. The rhythm in these lines is very exacting in order to reference the regularity of the funeral service.

Coffin after coffin

Seemed to float from the door

Of the packed cathedral

They floated out like they were "blossoms on slow-moving water".The water imagery continues, as the poet defines how the onlookers were wrapped together in their morning, like "brothers in a ring".

Stanza Two

In the second stanza of the section, the speaker describes how O'Neil disobeyed curfew. There was no way that his family could hold him back. It didn't matter what kind of threats were called in or what kind of "black flags waved".

The speaker then spends the next lines of 'Casualty' describing how he saw O'Neil in that "bomb offending place". On the man's face he observed remorse and terror. These were present while he was still "knowable," or alive. His face was blinded in the flash of the bombing.

Stanza Three

In the third stanza of the second section, Heaney emphasizes the lengths the man would go to find something to drink. If it had not been for his habit he would not have disobeyed the curfew. He was like a fish who naturally and instinctually swim towards the "lit up places". He was attracted to the glasses / in the gregarious smoke".

The next lines of 'Casualty' are used to speak on whether or not it should be considered O'Neil's fault that he died. The poet isn't sure how he should think about this, and at the moment he thinks back to a conversation he had with her O'Neil before he died. He quotes the man saying:

'Now, you're supposed to be

An educated man,'

....

The right answer to that one.'

Part III

Stanza One

The first stanza of the third section of 'Casualty' is the longest. It begins with the poet saying that he missed O'Neil's funeral. But, he knows how it went. Again, the rhythm and rhyme correspond to mimic the step of the mourners and the horses. They are compared to groups of fish that are "Shoaling" from one place to another. They all move at an "equal pace ". At this point, funeral processions have a"habitual / slow consolation". There is something darkly meditative about the sound of the dawdling engine. This calm, but mournful moment is merged with the poet's own memory of a time that he and O'Neil went fishing. There was:

[...] cold sunshine

on the water, the land

was covered with fog [...]

Just as the engine of the car was dawdling, the engine of the boat was "purling" in "Indolent fathoms white". In those moments that he was fishing with his friend, he "tasted freedom with him". The simple pleasure in getting out early and falling into a rhythm, brought Heaney to a different, but similar king of meditative state. The miles go by, and as he recalls the experience he dwells on distance, and the unknowable future and past.

Stanza Two

Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.

O'Neil is the intended listener of the final lines of 'Casualty'. Heaney describes him as"Dawn-sniffing revenant" and"plodder," or someone moving slowly, as O'Neil did, "through midnight rain". He was the best and worst of his own attributes. The last line asks the man, now revenant, to "Question [him] again" as he did when the two would drink together.

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Casualty by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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' Casualty' by Seamus Heaney is a three-part poem that is made up of stanzas of different lengths. The three parts were divided up by the poet with Roman numerals in the original text. There is no single pattern of rhyme or rhythm in this text, but that doesn't mean that it lacks unity.

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'The Harvest Bow' was published in Heaney's 1979 collection Field Work. It is one of the best-known poems from that collection. Heaney takes a nostalgic and caring tone in this work as he deals with his own memories and emotional connection to childhood. The mood itself is nostalgic and contemplative as the poet considers themes of tradition, father/son relationships, and happiness.

Summary of The Harvest Bow

' The Harvest Bow' by Seamus Heaney is a nostalgic poem that depicts the poet's own memories of his father and the harvest bow.

The poem takes the reader through a series of memories that begin with the poet speaking to a single person. This person is never named, only referred to in the second person as "you". They are most certainly Heaney's father or a father figure of some kind. The poet looks back on his past and is brought to the moments in which his father was crafting the traditional harvest bow. This scene is peaceful and is made more so by the father's own "mellow...silence".

Heaney takes his time describing his father's hands, their skills, experience, and the different materials they dealt with during his life. His father's hands became so experienced that he could do things like crafting the harvest bow as a sleepwalker would. The tasks came to him automatically, without a period of planning.

Through the next sections of the poem, the poet looks back to times he and his father walked through the wheat field. He'd carry the fishing rod and his father would "Whack" the grasses.The poem concludes with an image of the poet hanging the harvest bow above their dresser and considering how it came into his life. He also thinks about the important role it plays in his memoirs as a symbol for a time of safety and happiness.

You can read the full poem here.

Structure of the Poem

' The Harvest Bow' by Seamus Heaney is a five stanza poem that's separated into sets of six lines, known as sestets. These lines do not follow a single pattern of rhyme but Heaney does make significant use of half-rhyme at the end of many lines. Half-rhyme, also known as slant or partial rhyme,is seen through the repetition of assonance or consonance. This means that either a vowel or consonant sound is reused within one line or multiple lines of verse. For example, "twist" and "rust" in lines three and four of the first stanza and "sticks" and "cocks" in lines one and two of the second stanza.

Poetic Techniques

Heaney also makes use of several poetic techniques in 'The Harvest Bow'. These include alliteration, symbolism, enjambment, and simile. The first of these, alliteration, occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same letter. For example, "smoke straight" in the fourth line of the third stanza and "deal dresser" in line three of the fifth stanza.

Symbolism is when a poet uses objects, colors, sounds, or places to represent something else. In this case, the harvest bow is used as a symbol for sustained familial relationships and love, particularly that between a father and a son. It also touches on themes of tradition. A harvest bow is a decorative knot made from the wheat of a harvest. They are often twisted, braided, and then hung on the wall.

A simile is a comparison between two unlike things that uses the words "like" or "as". A poet uses this kind of figurative language to say that one thing is similar to another, not like metaphor, that it "is" another. There are a few examples within the text, such as in line four of the final stanza: "Like a drawn snare". Here, the poet is comparing the hung bow to a "drawn snare" from which "corn" rather than an animal has slipped.

Another important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. There are several examples throughout 'The Harvest Bow' including the transition between lines one and two of the first stanza and three and four of the fifth.

Analysis of The Harvest Bow

Stanza One

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
(...)
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

In the first stanza of this poem the speaker, who is also likely the poet himself, begins by speaking in the second person. He describes "you" and a few actions "you" took. By starting in the second person he draws the reader into the narrative, making them a part of the story. But, it is not to an unknown listener he's directing his words, rather his father with whom he shared the experiences outlined in the text.

Heaney describes how his father "plaited," or braided,"the harvest bow". This is a traditional practice that for Heaney brings up a certain mood and feeling of his youth. He recalls seeing this father work on the bow and recognizes a transmutation of his father's nature into the form. He "implicated" his own "mellow silence" into the wheat he was braiding.

Unlike a human being that grows more physically downtrodden with age, the bow is not going to rust. Rather, it "brightens was ti tightens twist by twist". Here, a reader can see Heaney makes use of internal rhyme. The words "brightens" and "tightens" are complete or perfect rhymes situated within a line of text. They speak to the regularity of the braided bow and his father's practiced hands.

As his father works on it the bow becomes a "knowable corona," or the bright eye of the sun. The bow is compared through the use of a metaphor to a "throwaway love-knot of straw". Despite its reverential description in the previous lines, Heaney notes that it's only made from leftover straw. It can be thrown away at any time and will be at some time in the future.

Stanza Two

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
(...)
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

In the second stanza, the poet picks the poem up again by depicting his father's hands. He thinks about their history. His father's own process of aging was marked by "ashplants and cane sticks" and hard work. He can see that hard work embodied in his father's hands. The next lines give the reader a sense of the life his father lived and the "lifetime" of experience that's contained in his hands. For example, "lapp[ing]" the spurs of fighting gamecocks.

These practices were so engrained that his father's hands moved like a sleepwalker. They handled everything automatically. The poet moves back to the harvest bow in the fifth line.

Stanza Three

And if I spy into its golden loops
(...)
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

In the third stanza of 'The Harvest Bow', the speaker looks back on the creation of the harvest bow and is taken into a series of memories. He can recall the times the two spent walking "between the railway slopes". These thoughts are clear and punctuated by a landscape filled with agricultural symbols. There are ploughs in the hedges and an "auction notice on an outhouse wall". Then, in amongst it all, directing the poet's memories is his father with the "harvest bow in [his] lapel".

These memories have a very clear warmth to them. They are comforting, and Heaney's tone is peaceful and nostalgic as he remembers them. This poem is only one example of Heaney's tendency to look towards childhood as a place of refuge. The majority of his most popular poems were written during the period of The Troubles in Ireland. The fears, struggles, and losses of everyday life inspired him to look to his youth as a time of safety and happiness. Another example of nostalgia in Heaney's poetry can be found in 'Sunlight'. This poem depicts his aunt's kitchen and the way she imbued love into everything she did, such as her cooking.

Stanza Four

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
(...)
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The memories of Heaney's walk with his father are continued into the next six lines. He recalls how he carried "the fishing rod" and his father walked ahead of him "Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes". Just as the poet creates rhythm in these lines, so too does Heaney's father as he beats the grasses around him. The noise, movement, and memory are all "out of time," lost to the past but still a part of Heaney's present.

In the fifth line of this stanza, he mentions the "original townland". This is likely a reference to an old-fashioned way of dividing land that was used in Ireland. It could be referring to how the land was divided in years past, again, another reference to tradition and memory.

Stanza Five

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
(...)
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

In the last six lines, the poet zooms back to consider the relevance of the harvest bow as a symbol of love and peace. He states, "The end of art is peace". That could be, he adds, the "motto of this frail device". Here, he is referring to the bow and how it brings him back to the sights and sounds mentioned in the previous stanzas.

He explains how he has pinned the bow "on our deal dresser". The word "deal" refers to the type of wood the dresser is made out of. It's a soft timber, likely pine or fir. The addition of the word creates a pleasing moment of alliteration. It is with a final simile that the poet concludes the poem. He compares the bow to a "drawn snare," or a trap that's been pulled tight around an animal's foot.

But this trap has been "Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn". The wheat is a representative of something that's gone, the spirit of the corn. But, the corn didn't leave it untouched. It's "still warm" from its presence. This connects to the emotions Heaney ties into the tradition of the harvest bow. Then, also how his own memories move through time.

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The Harvest Bow by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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'The Harvest Bow' was published in Heaney's 1979 collection Field Work. It is one of the best-known poems from that collection. Heaney takes a nostalgic and caring tone in this work as he deals with his own memories and emotional connection to childhood.

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‘Clearances’ forms part of a series of sonnets in which Heaney examines his relationship with his mother, and focuses on her death.

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'Lightenings VIII' is in Heaney's Squarings series. It is one of the most popular of this group and deals, as the others do, with Celtic and/or Christian legends. The poem speaks on themes of religion, the divine, wonder, and the sublime. Heaney sets the poem in the 6th century in a chapel at Clonmacnoise, a monastery in County Coffaly, founded in 544.

When speaking about this poem, Heaney references Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson's A Celtic Miscellany. It is in this work one might find a translation of the original story Heaney based the poem on. Heaney adds that when writing he "misremembered some of the details," such as the boat hooking onto the altar rails rather than coming down to the floor.

' Lightenings VIII' by Seamus Heaney is a retelling of a short Celtic legend involving a phantom ship and a collection of monks at Clonmacnoise.

The poem begins with the speaker setting the scene and describing the miraculous appearance of the ship. It comes from nowhere, shocking all present. The anchor drops, securing it to the "altar rail". When a man comes down from the ship the abbot realizes he needs help and the monks do what they can to get the ship free. It sails away and all are left amazed.

You can read the full poem here.

Like the other poems in Heaney's Squarings series, 'Lightenings VIII' is made up of four sets of three lines, known as tercets. These tercets are unrhymed, but they are of a similar length, with the majority containing ten syllables.

While there are no full end rhymes, there are examples of half-rhyme. These are seen through the repetition of assonance or consonance. This means that either a vowel or consonant sound is reused within one line or multiple lines of verse. For instance, "prayers" and "air" in lines two and three.

There are also examples of internal rhyme. It is not constrained to the end of the lines but can appear anywhere. For instance, "standstill" and "will" in lines six and nine.

Poetic Techniques

Heaney also makes use of several poetic techniques in 'Lightenings VIII'. These include alliteration, enjambment, and caesura. The latter, caesura, occurs when a line is split in half. Sometimes with punctuation, sometimes not. For example, the eighth line: "And struggled to release it. But in vain". Or, another example, the first line: "The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise".

Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same letter. There are a few examples in 'Lightenings VIII,' such as in line eleven with "ship sailed".

Another important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. For example, the transition between lines eleven and twelve.

Analysis of Lightenings VIII

Lines 1-3

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
(...)
A ship appeared above them in the air.

In the first lines of 'Lightenings VIII' the speaker begins by placing the story in "Clonmacnoise". This monastery is at the center of the poem, as are the monks who are praying within it. The "annal" or records of the year, contained the events set out in the text.

The speaker describes how on this particular occasion the monks were "at prayers" in the "oratory" or small, private chapel. It was there, in the intimacy of this space, that a "ship appeared above" the monks in the air. The legend depicts the ship as of another world that at that moment merged with the world in which the monks were existing. The apparition is described in more detail in the next three lines.

Lines 4-6

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
(...)
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

The speaker adds that the ship appeared to be interacting physically with the monk's world. The two were connecting. Its anchor came down and dragged along behind the ship until it caught hold of the "altar rails". This is the section of the chapel that separates the chancel from the nave.

From the tension, the ship was brought to a halt. Enjambment is very skillfully employed in the sixth line and a reader is encouraged to move quickly to the seventh in order to find out what happens next.

Lines 7-9

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
(...)
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'

Amazingly, a man climbs down from the ship in an attempt to free it from the altar rail. The crew was not meant to stop here, the collision of the two worlds was unintentional. The single man sent to complete this mission struggled "to release" the ship. After noting what was taking place, and in a calm, collected way, the abbot (the head monk) speaks.

He realizes that this man, from another world, "can't bear out life here" and is soon to drown. By using the word drown the speaker places the monastery in the water, as it would be if a ship's anchor got caught on it.

Lines 10-12

The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So
(...)
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

In the last three lines, the abbot knows he and the other monks have to help the ship get free. They did so and the "ship sailed" from the chapel. Just as the monks were amazed by the appearance of the ship, so too was the crewman amazed by the presence of the monks. He had temporarily entered into a "marvellous" world.

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Lightenings VIII (The annals say...) by Seamus Heaney - Poem Analysis

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'Lightenings VIII' is in Heaney's Squarings series. It is one of the most popular of this group and deals, as the others do, with Celtic and/or Christian legends. The poem speaks on themes of religion, the divine, wonder, and the sublime.

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The Door Was Open and The House Was Dark - Analysis

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The Door Was Open and The House Was Dark - Analysis

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Heaney's 'dream' poem is dedicated to the memory of close friend David Hammond, much admired Northern Irish writer, singer, teacher, songwriter, historian, musician, film-maker and broadcaster who died in August 2008. As with all dreams the conscious and sub-conscious contribute ostensibly at random to the dream's main 'message'.

In a BBC interview with Eimaar Flanagan of Sept 23, 2010 Heaney insisted the poem was not written - but dreamt. 'The dream is just recorded in verse that rhymes. It was an extremely strange, haunting dream. One of those dreams that marks, that you don't forget'.

Heaney's indirect reference (hence perhaps the quotation marks) to Virgil's Aenied vi (ll.172-177) - ' Death's dark door stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps and get back to upper air, That is the task, that is the undertaking ' echoes the Virgilian expectation that some shade will be returned to life on earth - for them death is reversible.

Pitch-black night - the stuff of nightmare?

A visitor stood before the door of a familiar house. Unlike previous occasions ( this time) he was faced with an eerie paradox: an ever welcoming door ( open) yet no sign of life ( house was dark). The caller sought some reassurance ( wherefore I called his name) but heard only his own voice ( I knew the answer this time) followed by a resonating quiet ( silence) sufficient to halt his progress ( kept me standing, listening), a perceptible force-field ( it grew backwards and down and out into the street) suggestive of the soundless passage of a shade departing in search of alternative refuge.

Pitch darkness ( street lamps too were out) brought him an unprecedented ( I felt for the first time) yet palpable ( there and then) sense of alienation ( stranger, intruder almost).His instinct said 'get out of here' ( take flight), his reason told him 'stay' ( there was no danger) 'you are witnessing a dead man's soul moving silently on' ( only withdrawal).

For all the sense of loss ( emptiness) the dwelling place still exuded its erstwhile joie de vivre and hospitality it once exuded ( not unwelcoming).

The visitor's memory is drawn to a similar site in darkness ( midnight hangar) bereft of any further the post-war usefulness ( overgrown airfield in late summer) still inhabited by the shadows and memories of a lost domain.

wherefore: as a result of which;

down and out: as a discrete phrase there is a suggestion homelessness and vagrancy;

out: not operating;

intruder: uninvited presence;

take flight: flee, run away;

withdrawal: exodus with added sense of 'something being taken back';

hangar: extensive building holding aircraft;

overgrown: with plants that have been untended, sense of 'derelict:

Heaney, who has, of course, been 'the visitor' all along, writes elsewhere in his poetry about Toome airfield with its teeming activity during the build-up to D-Day in June 1944 in stark contrast to its silence and disuse once the war was over.

airfield: Heaney was particularly familiar with the once active, disused Toome airfield close to his Castledawson homes first Mossbawn then The Wood Farm ; The Aerodromein District and Circle describes wartime activity at Toome;

4 triplets, lines generally of 10 syllables;

unusually for the collection Heaney offers a rhyme scheme: knew/ grew; now/ out stranger/danger; hangar/ summer;

The early frequency of the diphthong as in now... out ... down resembles the British 'ow', an exclamation of pain;

Slightly archaic usage: Wherefore; this permits the assonance door/ wherefore;

The final syllable of the double participle, standing listening, is a continuant that can prolong delivery to reflect the instant;

Alliterative there and then; well aware/ withdrawal/ unwelcoming;

Litotes of not unwelcoming that urges amendment

Frequency of alveolar [t] in stanza 3; assonance: no/ Only; overgrown;

Vocabulary of the insubstantial; silence/ withdrawal/ emptiness;

plays on the double idea: 'there is nothing there'; 'there was something there.;

The use of 'late'can refer also to death.

For a celebration of the life of David Hammond, see Seamus Heaney's obituary in The Guardian newspaper of Thursday 28 August 2008 and Keith Baker's BBC News Obituary of August 26th

At times, despite his effort to be consoled, it is as though whatever is being remembered has taken all his heart for speech. This is most apparent in an elegy for the Irish singer David Hammond, which contains four of these three-line stanzas plus one extra line. It is the poem where the struggle between pure lament and the search for comfort in images seems most intense: Colm Tóibín in The Guardian of Saturday 21 August 2010

Heaney is a meticulous craftsman using combinations of vowel and consonant to form a poem that is something to be listened to.

the music of the poem: thirteen assonant strands are woven into the text; Heaney places them grouped within specific areas to create internal rhymes , or reprises them at intervals or threads them through the text;

syllables without highlight are largely the unstressed sound as in comm, little [ə]

alliterative effects allow pulses or beats, soothings or hissings or frictions of consonant sound to modify the assonant melodies; this is sonic engineering of the first order;

a full breakdown of consonant sounds and where in the mouth they are formed is to be found in the Afterthoughts section;

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Poem The door was open and the house was dark by Seamus Heaney - Essay

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Heaney's 'dream' poem is dedicated to the memory of close friend David Hammond, much admired Northern Irish writer, singer, teacher, songwriter, historian, musician, film-maker and broadcaster who died in August 2008. As with all dreams the conscious and sub-conscious contribute ostensibly at random to the dream's main 'message'.

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Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, and edited several widely used anthologies. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994). He died in 2013.

Heaney has attracted a readership on several continents and has won prestigious literary awards and honors, including the Nobel Prize. As Blake Morrison noted in his work Seamus Heaney, the author is "that rare thing, a poet rated highly by critics and academics yet popular with 'the common reader.'" Part of Heaney's popularity stems from his subject matter-modern Northern Ireland, its farms and cities beset with civil strife, its natural culture and language overrun by English rule. The New York Review of Books essayist Richard Murphy described Heaney as "the poet who has shown the finest art in presenting a coherent vision of Ireland, past and present." Heaney's poetry is known for its aural beauty and finely-wrought textures. Often described as a regional poet, he is also a traditionalist who deliberately gestures back towards the "pre-modern" worlds of William Wordsworth and John Clare.

Heaney was born and raised in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland. The impact of his surroundings and the details of his upbringing on his work are immense. As a Catholic in Protestant Northern Ireland, Heaney once described himself in the New York Times Book Review as someone who "emerged from a hidden, a buried life and entered the realm of education." Eventually studying English at Queen's University, Heaney was especially moved by artists who created poetry out of their local and native backgrounds-authors such as Ted Hughes, Patrick Kavanagh, and Robert Frost. Recalling his time in Belfast, Heaney once noted: "I learned that my local County Derry [childhood] experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world' was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it." Heaney's work has always been most concerned with the past, even his earliest poems of the 1960s. According to Morrison, a "general spirit of reverence toward the past helped Heaney resolve some of his awkwardness about being a writer: he could serve his own community by preserving in literature its customs and crafts, yet simultaneously gain access to a larger community of letters." Indeed, Heaney's earliest poetry collections- Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969)-evoke "a hard, mainly rural life with rare exactness," according to critic and Parnassus contributor Michael Wood. Using descriptions of rural laborers and their tasks and contemplations of natural phenomena-filtered through childhood and adulthood-Heaney "makes you see, hear, smell, taste this life, which in his words is not provincial, but parochial; provincialism hints at the minor or the mediocre, but all parishes, rural or urban, are equal as communities of the human spirit," noted Newsweek correspondent Jack Kroll.

As a poet from Northern Ireland, Heaney used his work to reflect upon the "Troubles," the often-violent political struggles that plagued the country during Heaney's young adulthood. The poet sought to weave the ongoing Irish troubles into a broader historical frame embracing the general human situation in the books Wintering Out (1973) and North (1975). While some reviewers criticized Heaney for being an apologist and mythologizer, Morrison suggested that Heaney would never reduce political situations to false simple clarity, and never thought his role should be as a political spokesman. The author "has written poems directly about the Troubles as well as elegies for friends and acquaintances who have died in them; he has tried to discover a historical framework in which to interpret the current unrest; and he has taken on the mantle of public spokesman, someone looked to for comment and guidance," noted Morrison. "Yet he has also shown signs of deeply resenting this role, defending the right of poets to be private and apolitical, and questioning the extent to which poetry, however 'committed,' can influence the course of history." In the New Boston Review, Shaun O'Connell contended that even Heaney's most overtly political poems contain depths that subtly alter their meanings. "Those who see Seamus Heaney as a symbol of hope in a troubled land are not, of course, wrong to do so," O'Connell stated, "though they may be missing much of the undercutting complexities of his poetry, the backwash of ironies which make him as bleak as he is bright." As poet and critic Stephen Burt wrote, Heaney was "resistant to dogma yet drawn to the numinous." Helen Vendler described him as "a poet of the in-between."

Heaney's first foray into the world of translation began with the Irish lyric poem Buile Suibhne. The work concerns an ancient king who, cursed by the church, is transformed into a mad bird-man and forced to wander in the harsh and inhospitable countryside. Heaney's translation of the epic was published as Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish (1984). New York Times Book Review contributor Brendan Kennelly deemed the poem "a balanced statement about a tragically unbalanced mind. One feels that this balance, urbanely sustained, is the product of a long, imaginative bond between Mr. Heaney and Sweeney." This bond is extended into Heaney's 1984 volume Station Island, where a series of poems titled "Sweeney Redivivus" take up Sweeney's voice once more. The poems reflect one of the book's larger themes, the connections between personal choices, dramas and losses and larger, more universal forces such as history and language. In The Haw Lantern (1987)Heaney extends many of these preoccupations. W.S. DiPiero described Heaney's focus: "Whatever the occasion-childhood, farm life, politics and culture in Northern Ireland, other poets past and present-Heaney strikes time and again at the taproot of language, examining its genetic structures, trying to discover how it has served, in all its changes, as a culture bearer, a world to contain imaginations, at once a rhetorical weapon and nutriment of spirit. He writes of these matters with rare discrimination and resourcefulness, and a winning impatience with received wisdom."

With the publication of Selected Poems, 1966-1987 (1990) Heaney marked the beginning of a new direction in his career. Poetry contributor William Logan commented of this new direction, "The younger Heaney wrote like a man possessed by demons, even when those demons were very literary demons; the older Heaney seems to wonder, bemusedly, what sort of demon he has become himself." In Seeing Things (1991) Heaney demonstrates even more clearly this shift in perspective. Jefferson Hunter, reviewing the book for the Virginia Quarterly Review, maintained that collection takes a more spiritual, less concrete approach. "Words like 'spirit' and 'pure'... have never figured largely in Heaney's poetry," Hunter explained. However, in Seeing Things Heaney uses such words to "create a new distanced perspective and indeed a new mood" in which "'things beyond measure' or 'things in the offing' or 'the longed-for' can sometimes be sensed, if never directly seen." The Spirit Level (1996) continues to explore humanism, politics and nature.

Always respectfully received, Heaney's later work, including his second collected poems, Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 (1998), has been lavishly praised. Reviewing Opened Ground for the New York Times Book Review, Edward Mendelson commented that the volume "eloquently confirms [Heaney's] status as the most skillful and profound poet writing in English today." With Electric Light (2001), Heaney broadened his range of allusion and reference to Homer and Virgil, while continuing to make significant use of memory, elegy and the pastoral tradition. According to John Taylor in Poetry, Heaney "notably attempts, as an aging man, to re-experience childhood and early-adulthood perceptions in all their sensate fullness." Paul Mariani in America found Electric Light "a Janus-faced book, elegiac" and "heartbreaking even." Mariani noted in particular Heaney's frequent elegies to other poets and artists, and called Heaney "one of the handful writing today who has mastered that form as well."

Heaney's next volume District and Circle (2006) won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the most prestigious poetry award in the UK. Commenting on the volume for the New York Times, critic Brad Leithauser found it remarkably consistent with the rest of Heaney's oeuvre. But while Heaney's career may demonstrate an "of-a-pieceness" not common in poetry, Leithauser found that Heaney's voice still "carries the authenticity and believability of the plainspoken-even though (herein his magic) his words are anything but plainspoken. His stanzas are dense echo chambers of contending nuances and ricocheting sounds. And his is the gift of saying something extraordinary while, line by line, conveying a sense that this is something an ordinary person might actually say."

Heaney's prose constitutes an important part of his work. Heaney often used prose to address concerns taken up obliquely in his poetry. In The Redress of Poetry (1995), according to James Longenbach in the Nation, "Heaney wants to think of poetry not only as something that intervenes in the world, redressing or correcting imbalances, but also as something that must be redressed-re-established, celebrated as itself." The book contains a selection of lectures the poet delivered at Oxford University as Professor of Poetry. Heaney's Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001 (2002) earned the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, the largest annual prize for literary criticism in the English language. John Carey in the London Sunday Times proposed that Heaney's "is not just another book of literary criticism...It is a record of Seamus Heaney's thirty-year struggle with the demon of doubt. The questions that afflict him are basic. What is the good of poetry? How can it contribute to society? Is it worth the dedication it demands?" Heaney himself described his essays as "testimonies to the fact that poets themselves are finders and keepers, that their vocation is to look after art and life by being discoverers and custodians of the unlooked for."

As a translator, Heaney's most famous work is the translation of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (2000). Considered groundbreaking because of the freedom he took in using modern language, the book is largely credited with revitalizing what had become something of a tired chestnut in the literary world. Malcolm Jones in Newsweek stated: "Heaney's own poetic vernacular-muscular language so rich with the tones and smell of earth that you almost expect to find a few crumbs of dirt clinging to his lines-is the perfect match for the Beowulf poet's Anglo-Saxon...As retooled by Heaney, Beowulf should easily be good for another millennium." Though he has also translated Sophocles, Heaney remains most adept with medieval works. He translated Robert Henryson's Middle Scots classic and follow-up to Chaucer, The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables in 2009.

In 2009, Seamus Heaney turned 70. A true event in the poetry world, Ireland marked the occasion with a 12-hour broadcast of archived Heaney recordings. It was also announced that two-thirds of the poetry collections sold in the UK the previous year had been Heaney titles. Such popularity was almost unheard of in the world of contemporary poetry, and yet Heaney's voice is unabashedly grounded in tradition. Heaney's belief in the power of art and poetry, regardless of technological change or economic collapse, offers hope in the face of an increasingly uncertain future. Asked about the value of poetry in times of crisis, Heaney answered it is precisely at such moments that people realize they need more to live than economics: "If poetry and the arts do anything," he said, "they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness."

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Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, and edited several widely used anthologies.

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1. How do texts adhere to and deviate from conventions associated with literary forms or text types?

2. How do conventions and systems of reference evolve over time?

3. In what ways can diverse texts share points of similarity?

4. How valid is the notion of a classic text?

5. How can texts offer multiple perspectives of a single issue, topic or theme?

6. In what ways can comparison and interpretation be transformative?

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In the ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN IDEA:

1) What does the main idea mean? (Interpret)
2) How was this communicated? (Analyze) [poetic devices/structure/authorial craft]
3) How does this impact the reader? (Evaluate)