The Great Hunger Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCEFGFHDIJIKLFLMH FHNOAONONNPQFRFHFSFF SOSNTFUFFOFNHFNNNNNV NWNNHNNFNNFXYFYFFTOO FFONONFUFFHZH AA2NUHUNNB2OFFFC2FFC 2D2D2ANNAHHFFNNE2UUE 2 ANONF2G2NG2NFUFUUH2H HHNFLFNI2NI2J2K2FL2F L2NFNFNFNFFF ANUFNFHUG2NI | 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
(1)
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