Seamus Heaney / Robert Frost Notes.

The Home of the Heron, George Inness, 1839, Oil on Canvas, Edward B. Butler Collection, Art Institute Chicago

Part I: 'Bogland' & 'For Once, Then Something'
Part II: 'Out Out' & 'The Harvest Bow.'


These notes are intended to support A-level students, but fans of Heaney and Frost may wish to reacquaint themselves with the poems too. They were originally compiled for a lecture.

Note to students: As you work through the poems, it is important you develop your own interpretations first before reading anything that anyone else has written. Your current personal circumstances and today's political and social climate are useful lenses through which to see the poems.

Due to copyright, I have not included the Heaney poems. It is best to have them in front of you when reading. The poems can be found at the following links:

Bogland
For Once, Then Something
Out, Out--
'The Harvest Bow' is not available on an authorised site.

Part I
'Bogland'

It is true that Ireland has no prairies 'to slice a big sun at evening,' but I take a different view of the landscape around Lough Neagh. On my first journey to Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy, I drove up the M2 through a silvery-white, wintry landscape. The sky dominated and the sun flamed red on the horizon. This was a striking contrast to my own home place of hills, craggy shoreline, basalt rock, and industry. Admittedly, the horizon was not endless — the Sperrin Mountains framed the canvas — but the flat, wide openness of Heaney’s landscape reminded me of America. The painting in my own imagination, therefore, contradicts the grain of this poem. This is how I began my personal conversation with 'Bogland'. Your experience of the poem will be entirely different from mine.

‘Bogland’ appears visually long and narrow, as though words are pouring down the page. It is a plainly set poem, but richly orated through assonance in “bog,” “wooed,” “Cyclops,” “astounding,” and the soft, pulpy echoes that form part of Heaney’s word hoard of onomatopoeia. Cyclops, the one-eyed giant of Greek mythology, becomes a metaphor for the round, dark lakes set into mountains or tarns.  Heaney describes the country as 'unfenced,' emphasising how bog dominates the Irish landscape: around twenty per cent of Ireland is bog, after all.

If you’re wondering what a bog actually is, Heaney offers some earthy descriptions. In ‘To a Dutch Potter in Ireland’ (not on your course), he calls it 'slabbery, clabbery, wintry, puddled ground.' Elsewhere, he delights in the word 'snottery,' revelling in language that might once have been banished from the classroom. In Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968–1978, he writes:

'To this day, green, wet corners, flooded wasters, soft rushy bottoms… possess an immediate and deeply peaceful attraction. It is as if I am betrothed to them.'

In Irish and Scottish folklore, bogs are liminal places, where the physical and spiritual worlds meet, but they are also ominous, and, as a child, Heaney feared bog holes as dangerous traps from which there was no return. During my own first days in Bellaghy, it seemed that water flowed into every orifice of the land — Lough Neagh, Lough Beg, and the River Bann all feeding into a landscape of wetlands. If you ever have the chance, visit the Strand at Lough Beg. There, you can experience this environment for yourself (and stand in the setting of one of Heaney’s most cherished poems, even if it’s not on your syllabus).

Bog does indeed crust over in the sun, something you can observe around the peatlands near Bellaghy or on the road to Newferry Harbour. Beneath that crust, remarkable things are preserved. On the day of that vast sky I mentioned, news broke (in January 2024) of a bog body discovery in Bellaghy. Given Heaney’s fascination with bog bodies, it was as though the poet had conjured Ballymacombs More Woman from the grave. While the discovery of a preserved bog body (without a head) in Bellaghy came too late for the poem ‘Bogland’, the Great Irish Elk, referenced in the poem, had already been unearthed in 1953, when Heaney was a teenager. (More recently, in 2018, fishermen recovered an enormous skull and antlers of an elk from Lough Neagh, dating back around 10,500 years).

Sphagnum moss is the key to this preservation: it conserves organic material with extraordinary effectiveness — elk, human bodies, even butter. The bog, in this sense, was the original refrigerator, and in the fourth stanza, the land becomes 'black butter,' 'melting and opening underfoot,' the image melting through enjambment into the next stanza. Scientifically, this landscape has not undergone the pressure and heat required to form coal, reinforcing its sense of incompletion and fluidity.

Heaney introduces the idea of 'pioneers.' In an American context, pioneers are those who pushed westward. But who are the Irish pioneers? Heaney places them in the present tense: 'Our pioneers keep striking / Inwards and downwards.' This suggests excavation rather than expansion. Archaeologists are one possible interpretation, those who have uncovered layers of history. Or perhaps our pioneers are poets: is it the poet's task to uncover the truth by digging downwards?

Heaney ultimately situates Ireland within a wider Atlantic context. This may reflect patterns of migration, with successive waves of Celts, Norse settlers, and English colonisers moving to the island, and then onwards to America. Unlike the vast 2,800-mile expansion of the American frontier, Ireland’s journey west is shorter — just over 100 miles. The poem suggests that the real journey is not across land, but down into it. The 'wet centre' of the bog stretches endlessly inward. The poem itself ends without a full stop. Open and unfinished, 'the wet centre is bottomless.'

To read the rest of both Part I and Part II, click 'Read More'.

The Lonely Farm, George Inness, 1892, Oil on canvas, Edward B. Butler Collection, Art Institute Chicago.

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'For Once, then Something'

‘For Once, Then, Something’ by Robert Frost is written in a specialised metre known as phalaecean hendecasyllabics. The term ‘phalaecean’ comes from the Alexandrian poet Phalaikos, while ‘hendeca syllabic’ simply means eleven syllables. In practice, this produces a rhythm that echoes the sound of a gallop. In keeping with his farmer persona, Frost often gives the impression of simplicity, making his poems accessible to readers unfamiliar with technical terms like ‘phalaecean hendecasyllabics.’ Beneath the simplicity lies a high level of craftsmanship, and in this poem, Frost appears to mock himself and the traditions of poetry.

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.

He calls upon the Greek mythological figure Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection and was doomed never truly to know himself. Frost’s speaker, gazing into the well, risks similar self-absorption. (Heaney also delves into wells and Narcissus in the poem 'Personal Helicon', a more common pairing with this poem). There is a note of humour in the image of a ‘wreath of fern and cloud puffs,’ a parody, almost certainly, of Classical poetry. 

The final lines are:

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

The word ‘lo’ is archaic, meaning ‘behold'. Its placing may be ironic, but it also helps maintain the poem’s rhythm and signals a turning point. The still surface is disturbed; the speaker glimpses something deeper, though still unclear. The poem closes with ambiguity: ‘For once, then, something.’ Has the speaker genuinely glimpsed truth, or merely another illusion? Frost does not resolve this for us, and perhaps that is the point. When we search for truth, the surface is often distorted by reflection, bias, and interruption. The image of the well suggests that clarity is always just out of reach, momentarily glimpsed, then obscured again.

Truth is endlessly obscured by the lens through which we view the world, which is why it is important to come to conclusions about these poems before consulting what critics have said about them. 'Bogland', for example, can be read in light of recent archaeological discoveries, as can many of Heaney's bog body poems, which now seem prophetic. History, like truth, is reinterpreted time and again as we keep digging downwards, uncovering new possibilities. The well and the bog both seem to offer infinite answers and none.

Part II -  'The Harvest Bow' & 'Out out—.'

'The Harvest Bow'

'The Harvest Bow’ opens with reflection: ‘As you plaited the harvest bow / You implicated the mellowed silence in you.’ A relationship is immediately established, which may be read as father and son. There is also local dialect, a strong sense of nostalgia and playful internal rhyme in ‘brightens as it tightens,’ while ‘twist by twist’ can easily shift in dialect to ‘twust by twust.’ Heaney is childlike in this playground of words. There is also rich use of half-rhyme and slant rhyme:

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,

The narrative emerges more fully in the third and fourth stanzas, shaped through the speaker’s reminiscence — likely Heaney himself, the observant child who would return to his childhood for inspiration all the way through his writing life. 

The Field Day collection was published in 1979. This was a year of revolution and conflict in Iran and Afghanistan, of the Sony Walkman, of the sci-fi horror Alien, of the surreal movie Apocalypse Now, of disco fever with the Bee Gees and Donna Summer, of Pink Floyd’s sprawling rock opera ‘The Wall’. Yet here we have Seamus Heaney stepping away from the fairground of modern life to write one of his most beautiful poems — about an object fashioned from a simple plait of straw. All is not entirely nostalgic or idealised, however. There are old beds in hedges and, in the age of the tractor, discarded ploughs. An auction notice hints at change, at dispersal, at the quiet clearing away of older ways of life. Alongside dialect, bushes, and midges, there is also a subtle sense of loss. 

In the fifth stanza, the bow rests on the deal dresser, a rustic cabinet, possibly in the kitchen and likely in a house now shared with the speaker's partner or wife. Here we encounter the striking statement: ‘The end of art is peace.’ Often associated with W. B. Yeats, it echoes the Latin phrase Finis rerum est pax, ‘the end of all things is peace.’ How should we interpret this? What does 'end' mean? Does Heaney suggest that the purpose of art is peace? That completing a work of art brings peace? Or even that stepping away from art offers peace?

My own view, as a writer, is that there is a certain enjoyment to the craft that may be similar to the productivity of knitting or embroidering — or plaiting. The 'end' or 'the purpose', of artistry, therefore, can be peace. Heaney himself suggested that a poem is like a painting, that it is finished when the body relaxes after a period of stress and composition. If 'end' marks the completion of a task, then I'd suggest that finishing a piece of art is satisfying, but it does not always bring peace: there is sometimes a lingering sense that the work could be better. Alternatively, the next project is often already forming. Writing can disturb peace as much as create it — it can unsettle, challenge, and fragment. I would encourage you to reflect on this idea yourself, and to relate it to your own experience. What kind of ‘peace’ is this, especially when the bow itself is described as both ‘frail’ and a ‘snare’? Can we be trapped in art?

Traditionally, the harvest bow was made from the final sheaf of the harvest, believed to contain the spirit of the corn. If you explore this further, you’ll find lots of information on Celtic myth and pre-Christian beliefs. Heaney often uncovers traces of the sacred in ordinary places: where we might see an ordinary river, like the Moyola in Castledawson, he imagines presences, histories, even deities. The harvest bow, then, may gesture towards figures such as Lugh, the Celtic god of light, or echo protective symbols like St Brigid’s cross. It may even function as a kind of offering, linking the present moment to an older, more mythic consciousness. Are we being warned not to discard these traditions too lightly?

Structurally, the poem is carefully controlled — five stanzas of six lines (sestets), almost like the plait itself, with strands interwoven, doubled, and tightened, the rhyme scheme (AABBCC) reinforcing this sense of pattern. The rhythm is steady but not rigid: it is almost trance-like, mimicking the way we work when at peace.

Returning to the idea of ‘the end of art’, we begin to see a tension between peace and something darker. This leads us into a shared theme across both 'The Harvest Bow' and 'Out, Out—': light and darkness. In ‘The Harvest Bow’, we have golden loops, bright wheat, and ‘the big lift of these evenings’, even a sense of a corona (a halo), when the bow is held to the light. The poem closes warmly, with an impression of love, understood as the quiet, unspoken bond between father and son in a time before overt expressions of feeling, but still this idea of the end of something lingers.

Out, Out--

Robert Frost’s ‘Out, Out—’ is written as a single stanza in blank verse and unrhymed iambic pentameter — the rhythm of speech, of narrative, of drama. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. A heartbeat — for now. There are fewer questions; the poem leans more heavily on narration than reflection. It opens starkly: ‘The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard.’ Deploying anthropomorphism, Frost has attributed animalistic properties to this beast, so that the saw is snarling, rattling and alive. Set against the peaceful backdrop of ‘five mountain ranges one behind the other’ at sunset, this violent sound is all the more threatening. The boy is given no reprieve — not even the half-hour he needs to rest and play. And notice how often the word ‘boy’ is repeated. The saw, now personified, seems to ‘know’ what supper means, and leaps from his grasp. The em dash creates a moment of dreadful pause — he must have given the lacerated hand. Even before the horrific exclamation, ‘But the hand!’, there is tension.

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling.

The repetition of ‘boy’ continues, ‘big boy / Doing a man’s work’, which is undercut by the devastating reminder, ‘though a child at heart.’ The voice is less dialect-rich than Heaney’s, but still rooted in speech and colloquialism, providing immediacy to the drama: ‘Don’t let him, sister!’  It is difficult not to think of the real-life figure behind the poem: Raymond Tracy Fitzgerald, a sixteen-year-old boy known to Frost’s family. 

The colloquial ‘so’ is dramatised, 'So. But the hand was gone already.' As the poem moves towards its conclusion, the language fragments. ‘No one believed.’ The long dashes stretch like fading pulses: ‘Little—less—nothing!’ The modern reader might even hear a long, absent sound that indicates lifelessness. Beep, beep, beep, shush. 

The final lines are stark:

No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

These are courageous lines — unsentimental and unsettling. Life continues. The world moves on. What must have the boy's family thought of Frost's poem? As a writer, I can't imagine penning it during their lifetime.

We have two very different poems: one rooted in pastoral reflection and quiet mysticism, the other in brutal realism; one celebrated for its beauty, the other for its shock. They seem difficult to compare — until we return to the line: ‘The end of art is peace.’ We often say that death brings peace. In ‘Out, Out—’, death may be read as a  release — from pain, from labour, from the impossible demands placed on a child. Imagine if the the boy had had a half-hour in the field, to play, to twist straw in his hands, to be at peace in life through art.

​If death is peace, then it follows that the 'end', the finished product, of art is death and the end of childhood play is death, because art and childhood play are entwined, like a knowable corona beyond, behind and before the knots and snares of mechanical industry, labour and adulthood.  We must save art to have peace. 

Landscape, Sunset, George Inness, c. 1887–1889, Oil on canvas, Edward B. Butler Collection, Art Institute Chicago.

Glossary
Anthropomorphism: Attributing human characteristics or motives to non-human objects.
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds.
Blank Verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Colloquialism: The use of informal or local conversational language.
Elegiac: Mournful.
Enjambment: When a sentence or thought runs over from one line or stanza to the next.
Liminal: Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.
Phalaecean Hendecasyllabics: A specific classical meter of eleven syllables.
Slant Rhyme (or Half-Rhyme): Rhyme in which the stressed syllables of ending consonants match, but the preceding vowel sounds do not (e.g., loops/slopes).

Did you know?

The 'Great Irish Elk' was a giant of the Ice Age (100,000 to 10,000 years ago). The Megaloceros giganteus featured in 'Bogland' had antlers spanning up to 12 feet. By referencing a creature that has been extinct for 10,000 years, Heaney suggests that the Irish bog is a vast library of natural history.

A well-curb is the stone or wooden rim at the top of a well. In 'For Once, Then, Something,' Frost’s position, kneeling at this curb, is also a posture of prayer. The wreath of fern he sees is a literal frame that traps his own reflection, making the 'truth' at the bottom even harder to discern.

The Harvest Bow is a 'Vestigial Ritual.' Traditionally, a harvest bow was woven from the final sheaf of the harvest, believed to contain the 'Spirit of the Corn' to ensure fertility for the next year. When the speaker's father plaits the straw, he is performing an ancient, pre-Christian ritual that connects the 20th century to a mythic past. (A vestigial ritual is a custom, action, or ceremony that continues to be performed even though its original purpose, religious meaning, or social necessity has largely disappeared or been forgotten).

The title 'Out, Out—' is a reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Out, out, brief candle!'). By using this allusion, Frost reminds the reader that the boy’s life is fragile and fleeting, and that the world will inevitably 'turn to their affairs' once the light goes out. The title comes from Act 5, Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. After being told his wife is dead, Macbeth delivers a famous soliloquy, 'Out, out, brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more.'

Critical Perspective

On 'Bogland'
​
Helen Vendler (1998): 'In 'Bogland', Heaney found his own quintessential symbol: the preserved, yielding, and bottomless soil of Ireland... a vertical descent into memory.' (Seamus Heaney, Harvard University Press).

On 'For Once, Then, Something'

Richard Poirier (1977): 'The poem is a playful but serious rebuke to those who demand that poetry provide a 'deep' Truth; Frost suggests that whatever 'Something' lies at the bottom is essentially erased by the act of looking.' (Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing, Oxford University Press).

Jay Parini (1999): 'Frost uses the hendecasyllabic meter to create a 'galloping' rhythm that mocks his own search for clarity, ultimately leaving the reader in a characteristically Frostian state of uncertainty.' (Robert Frost: A Life, Henry Holt and Co.)

On 'The Harvest Bow'

Michael Parker (1993): 'The harvest bow becomes a 'frail' but enduring bridge between the silent father and the articulate son... a silent form of communication.' (Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet, Macmillan).

Frank Ferguson (2016): 'Heaney’s poetry functions as a modern 'weaver' of tradition; in works like 'The Harvest Bow', he rescues the vernacular and the tactile rituals of rural life from the silence of history, transforming physical labor into a linguistic monument.' (We wove our ain wab: The Ulster Weaver Poets, Cambridge University Press)

On 'Out, Out—'
Frank Lentricchia (1975): 'By invoking Macbeth’s nihilism, Frost transforms a local tragedy into a universal statement on the 'sound and fury' of a landscape that offers no comfort to its laborers.' (Robert Frost: Modern Poetics and the Landscapes of Self, Duke University Press).

Fran Brearton (2000): "In Frost’s 'Out, Out—', the mechanical violence of the saw interrupts the pastoral peace, creating a tragedy that resonates with the ‘Great War’ generation’s sense of lives cut short by impersonal, industrial forces." (The Great War in Irish Poetry, Oxford University Press)




Sample Essay Questions:

1. Heaney and Frost both use physical features of the earth — the bog and the well — to explore the 'journey inwards.' Compare how both poets use the natural world to represent the difficulty of finding absolute truth.

2. In 'The Harvest Bow', Heaney writes that 'the end of art is peace.' Contrast this with Frost's presentation of labour and its consequences in 'Out, Out—'. To what extent do both poets suggest that rural life is a struggle between creation and destruction?

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