Digging
by Seamus Heaney
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
Death of a Naturalist
by Seamus Heaney
‘Death of a Naturalist’ shows a child’s fascination of the countryside, followed by a sharp shock when he senses the dark side of nature.
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.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
The Tollund Man
by Seamus Heaney
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
Personal Helicon
by Seamus Heaney
Heaney’s ‘Personal Helicon’ draws inspiration from his rural carefree childhood and intimate connection with nature.
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Docker
by Seamus Heaney
‘Docker’ is a 1966 poem by Seamus Heaney which depicts the life of a dockworker in Belfast and explores his personal and religious sense of discord.
He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross,
Clearly used to silence and an armchair:
Tonight the wife and children will be quiet
At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
‘Had I not been awake’
by Seamus Heaney
‘Had I not been awake’ is a stunning expression of hope against the backdrop of doubt, which reminds the reader of their capacity to inspire.
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
A Call
by Seamus Heaney
Then found myself listening to
The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks
Where the phone lay unattended in a calm
A Constable Calls
by Seamus Heaney
His bicycle stood at the window-sill,
The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher
Skirting the front mudguard,
Its fat black handlegrips
A Drink of Water
by Seamus Heaney
She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field:
The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter
And slow diminuendo as it filled,
An Advancement of Learning
by Seamus Heaney
In ‘An Advancement of Learning’, a boy is faced with a rat, and through confronting it he addresses his fear and returns more confident.
I took the embankment path
(As always, deferring
The bridge). The river nosed past,
Pliable, oil-skinned, wearing
Explore more poems from Seamus Heaney
Anything Can Happen
by Seamus Heaney
‘Anything Can Happen’ depicts a contemporary anxiety while referring to a mythological past. The poem has four quatrains with no fixed rhyme-scheme.
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now
At a Potato Digging
by Seamus Heaney
‘At a Potato Digging’ written by Seamus Heaney. The poem consists of four sections that depict men’s relationship with the land.
A mechanical digger wrecks the drill,
Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould.
Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill
Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold.
Blackberry-Picking
by Seamus Heaney
In ‘Blackberry-Picking’ the speaker is recalling a recurring scene from his youth: each August, he would pick blackberries and relish in their sweet taste.
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
Bogland
by Seamus Heaney
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
Casualty
by Seamus Heaney
He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
Clearances
by Seamus Heaney
‘Clearances’ forms part of a series of sonnets in which Heaney examines his relationship with his mother, and focuses on her death.
A cobble thrown a hundred years ago
Keeps coming at me, the first stone
Aimed at a great-grandmother's turncoat brow.
The pony jerks and the riot's on.
District and Circle
by Seamus Heaney
‘District and Circle’, written by Seamus Heaney, depicts parts of a journey, or of several journeys, on the London Underground.
Again the growl
Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble
Of iron on iron
Exposure
by Seamus Heaney
‘Exposure’ by Seamus Heaney discusses the poet’s role in a society and how he might contribute helpfully to the discourse of the time.
It is December in Wicklow:
Alders dripping, birches
Inheriting the last light,
The ash tree cold to look at.
Follower
by Seamus Heaney
‘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.
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.
Last Look
by Seamus Heaney
In ‘Last Look’ by Seamus Heaney the tale is told of an older man who is standing stationary and staring blankly toward a physical “field,”
We came upon him, stilled
and oblivious,
gazing into a field
of blossoming potatoes,
Lightenings VIII (The annals say…)
by Seamus Heaney
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
Man and Boy
by Seamus Heaney
My father is a barefoot boy with news,
Running at eye-level with weeds and stooks
On the afternoon of his own father’s death.
Mid-Term Break
by Seamus Heaney
‘Mid-Term Break’ by Seamus Heaney describes the emotional turmoil experienced by a speaker who has lost a loved one in a traumatic way.
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
Mossbawn: Sunlight
by Seamus Heaney
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
Out of the Bag
by Seamus Heaney
All of us came in Doctor Kerlin's bag.
He'd arrive with it, disappear to the room
And by the time he'd reappear to wash
Postscript
by Seamus Heaney
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
Punishment
by Seamus Heaney
‘Punishment’ is featured in North, a poetry collection published in 1975. North seeks for images and symbols to convey violence and political conflicts.
I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.
Requiem for the Croppies
by Seamus Heaney
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
Storm on the Island
by Seamus Heaney
We are prepared: we build our houses squat,
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
This wizened earth has never troubled us
Summer 1969
by Seamus Heaney
While the Constabulary covered the mob
Firing into the Falls, I was suffering
Only the bullying sun of Madrid.
Each afternoon, in the casserole heat
