The Great Hunger Poem Rhyme Scheme

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I	A
Clay is the word and clay is the flesh	B
Where the potato gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move	C
Along the side fall of the hill Maguire and his men	D
If we watch them an hour is there anything we can prove	C
Of life as it is broken backed over the Book	E
Of Death Here crows gabble over worms and frogs	F
And the gulls like old newspapers are blown clear of the hedges luckily	G
Is there some light of imagination in these wet clods	F
Or why do we stand here shivering	H
Which of these men	D
Loved the light and the queen	I
Too long virgin Yesterday was summer Who was it promised marriage to himself	J
Before apples were hung from the ceilings for Hallowe'en	I
We will wait and watch the tragedy to the last curtain	K
Till the last soul passively like a bag of wet clay	L
Rolls down the side of the hill diverted by the angles	F
Where the plough missed or a spade stands straitening the way	L
A dog lying on a torn jacket under a heeled up cart	M
A horse nosing along the posied headland trailing	H
A rusty plough Three heads hanging between wide apart legs	F
October playing a symphony on a slack wire paling	H
Maguire watches the drills flattened out	N
And the flints that lit a candle for him on a June altar	O
Flameless The drills slipped by and the days slipped by	A
And he trembled his head away and ran free from the world's halter	O
And thought himself wiser than any man in the townland	N
When he laughed over pints of porter	O
Of how he came free from every net spread	N
In the gaps of experience He shook a knowing head	N
And pretended to his soul	P
That children are tedious in hurrying fields of April	Q
Where men are spanning across wide furrows	F
Lost in the passion that never needs a wife	R
The pricks that pricked were the pointed pins of harrows	F
Children scream so loud that the crows could bring	H
The seed of an acre away with crow rude jeers	F
Patrick Maguire he called his dog and he flung a stone in the air	S
And hallooed the birds away that were the birds of the years	F
Turn over the weedy clods and tease out the tangled skeins	F
What is he looking for there	S
He thinks it is a potato but we know better	O
Than his mud gloved fingers probe in this insensitive hair	S
'Move forward the basket and balance it steady	N
In this hollow Pull down the shafts of that cart Joe	T
And straddle the horse ' Maguire calls	F
'The wind's over Brannagan's now that means rain	U
Graip up some withered stalks and see that no potato falls	F
Over the tail board going down the ruckety pass	F
And that's a job we'll have to do in December	O
Gravel it and build a kerb on the bog side Is that Cassidy's ass	F
Out in my clover Curse o' God	N
Where is that dog	H
Never where he's wanted' Maguire grunts and spits	F
Through a clay wattled moustache and stares about him from the height	N
His dream changes like the cloud swung wind	N
And he is not so sure now if his mother was right	N
When she praised the man who made a field his bride	N
Watch him watch him that man on a hill whose spirit	N
Is a wet sack flapping about the knees of time	V
He lives that his little fields may stay fertile when his own body	N
Is spread in the bottom of a ditch under two coulters crossed in Christ's Name	W
He was suspicious in his youth as a rat near strange bread	N
When girls laughed when they screamed he knew that meant	N
The cry of fillies in season He could not walk	H
The easy road to destiny He dreamt	N
The innocence of young brambles to hooked treachery	N
O the grip O the grip of irregular fields No man escapes	F
It could not be that back of the hills love was free	N
And ditches straight	N
No monster hand lifted up children and put down apes	F
As here	X
'O God if I had been wiser '	Y
That was his sigh like the brown breeze in the thistles	F
He looks towards his house and haggard 'O God if I had been wiser '	Y
But now a crumpled leaf from the whitethorn bushes	F
Darts like a frightened robin and the fence	F
Shows the green of after grass through a little window	T
And he knows that his own heart is calling his mother a liar	O
God's truth is life even the grotesque shapes of his foulest fire	O
The horse lifts its head and cranes	F
Through the whins and stones	F
To lip late passion in the crawling clover	O
In the gap there's a bush weighted with boulders like morality	N
The fools of life bleed if they climb over	O
The wind leans from Brady's and the coltsfoot leaves are holed with rust	N
Rain fills the cart tracks and the sole plate grooves	F
A yellow sun reflects in Donaghmoyne	U
The poignant light in puddles shaped by hooves	F
Come with me Imagination into this iron house	F
And we will watch from the doorway the years run back	H
And we will know what a peasant's left hand wrote on the page	Z
Be easy October No cackle hen horse neigh tree sough duck quack	H
	-
II	A
Maguiire was faithful to death	A2
He stayed with his mother till she died	N
At the age of ninety one	U
She stayed too long	H
Wife and mother in one	U
When she died	N
The knuckle bones were cutting the skin of her son's backside	N
And he was sixty five	B2
O he loved his mother	O
Above all others	F
O he loved his ploughs	F
And he loved his cows	F
And his happiest dream	C2
Was to clean his arse	F
With perennial grass	F
On the bank of some summer stream	C2
To smoke his pipe	D2
In a sheltered gripe	D2
In the middle of July	A
His face in a mist	N
And two stones in his fist	N
And an impotent worm on his thigh	A
But his passion became a plague	H
For he grew feeble bringing the vague	H
Women of his mind to lust nearness	F
Once a week at least flesh must make an appearance	F
So Maguire got tired	N
Of the no target gun fired	N
And returned to his headland of carrots and cabbage	E2
To the fields once again	U
Where eunuchs can be men	U
And life is more lousy than savage	E2
	-
III	A
Poor Paddy Maguire a fourteen hour day	N
He worked for years It was he that lit the fire	O
And boiled the kettle and gave the cows their hay	N
His mother tall hard as a Protestant spire	F2
Came down the stairs barefoot at the kettle call	G2
And talked to her son sharply 'Did you let	N
The hens out you ' She had a venomous drawl	G2
And a wizened face like moth eaten leatherette	N
Two black cats peeped between the banisters	F
And gloated over the bacon fizzling pan	U
Outside the window showed tin canisters	F
The snipe of Dawn fell like a whirring stone	U
And Patrick on a headland stood alone	U
The pull is on the traces it is March	H2
And a cold black wind is blowing from Dundalk	H
The twisting sod rolls over on her back	H
The virgin screams before the irresistible sock	H
No worry on Maguire's mind this day	N
Except that he forgot to bring his matches	F
'Hop back there Polly hoy back woa wae	L
From every second hill a neighbour watches	F
With all the sharpened interest of rivalry	N
Yet sometimes when the sun comes through a gap	I2
These men know God the Father in a tree	N
The Holy Spirit is the rising sap	I2
And Christ will be the green leaves that will come	J2
At Easter from the sealed and guarded tomb	K2
Primroses and the unearthly start of ferns	F
Among the blackthorn shadows in the ditch	L2
A dead sparrow and an old waistcoat Maguire learns	F
As the horses turn slowly round the which is which	L2
Of love and fear and things half born to mind	N
He stands between the plough handles and he sees	F
At the end of a long furrow his name signed	N
Among the poets prostitutes With all miseries	F
He is one Here with the unfortunate	N
Who for half moments of paradise	F
Pay out good days and wait and wait	N
For sunlight woven cloaks O to be wise	F
As Respectability that knows the price of all things	F
And marks God's truth in pounds and pence and farthings	F
	-
IV	A
April and no one able to calculate	N
How far it is to harvest They put down	U
The seeds blindly with sensuous groping fingers	F
And sensual dreams sleep dreams subtly underground	N
Tomorrow is Wednesday who cares	F
'Remember Eileen Farrelly I was thinking	H
A man might do a damned sight worse ' That voice is blown	U
Through a hole in a garden wall	G2
And who was Eileen now cannot	N

Patrick Kavanagh

The Great Hunger Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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