Act of Union Lyrics
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.
II
And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obstinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a war drum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again
About
In this complex poem, published in Heaney’s 1975 North collection, Ireland is personified. The presentation is chilling, the “Act of Union” of the title is not only the historic 1801 legislation that cemented colonisation, but also a physical rape. England, the male persona, assaults the feminine Ireland whose back is turned in rejection; a depiction of the imposition of the control by one country on another. The consequence of this abuse is the legacy of conflict in Northern Ireland; a reference to the Troubles.
Structure
The two linked stanzas are sonnets, a from of poetry usually associated with love; ironically in this case, because rape is a travesty of love. The first sonnet presents the Union and the second sonnet its violent consequences.
The sonnet template is the English or Shakespearean pattern, with a rhyme scheme that follows the pattern ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. However, the traditional iambic pentameter is only partially adhered to, with Heaney deviating at points where he wishes to shock or emphasise. The effect is tight and concise.
Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a first person speaker who represents the male persona, England. The second person “you” he refers to is the female persona, Ireland.
The vivid and disturbing imagery is of a rape, its violence depicted unflinchingly. For example, Ireland is a “heaving province” and the assault results in a “gash”. Much of the language is overtly sexual, for example the “battering ram” described as “leaving you with pain”.
The child that is born from this unnatural union is horrifying — “parasitical”, “ignorant” with “little fists”. The mother, Ireland, is left significantly with “stretch marks”, the result of this rape-generated pregnancy.
The power of this imagery has huge impact. The detailed annotations provide deeper analysis.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 3.Antaeus
- 18.Punishment
- 19.Strange Fruit
- 28.Act of Union
