The Harvest Bow Lyrics
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.
Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,
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,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall—
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,
Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.
About
Seamus Heaney’s poetry collection Field Work published in 1979, deals with the poet’s childhood, focusing on memories of family and the distinctive culture and way of life in rural County Derry. Heaney’s was a large, Catholic farming family and the traditions and relationships are revived and examined through the poems. The tone throughout is nostalgic and affectionate.
“The Harvest Bow” is one of its most popular poems in Field Work. The poet highlights the themes of tradition and father/son relationship, using the metaphor of the woven harvest bow.
Structure
The poem comprises five stanzas of six uneven -length lines each. There is no rhyme scheme and the narrative flows smoothly, aided by enjambed line endings and long sentences.
Language and Imagery
The voice is that of the poet using the first person pronoun “I”, and addressing his father as “you”. The tone is warm, conveying great affection for his now-elderly father. This is achieved through understatement and description of what his father does, his skills, and not what he says. It is clear that the older man is quiet, as “the mellowed silence in you” conveys.
Heaney’s language is always concise and powerful, with no wasted words. This is evident in the opening stanza and continues throughout.
The harvest bow is the most important image in the poem, woven from wheat, a tradition that symbolises a way of life, and also his father’s skill — the older man can weave it without thinking. What he makes carries an unspoken message relating to culture, continuity and a tradition passed from father to son.
Though there is no regular rhyme scheme, occasional rhyme gives the poem coherence, such as “brushes” and “flushes” in stanza four and the consonantly rhyming “loops” and “slopes” in stanza three.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning