Seamus Heaney Quotes

And a young prince must be prudent like that,giving freely while his father livesso that afterwards, in age when fighting startssteadfast companions will stand by himand hold the line.
Seamus Heaney
It is a great wonderHow Almighty God in his magnificenceFavors our race with rank and scopeAnd the gift of wisdom; His sway is wide.Sometimes He allows the mind of a manOf distinguished birth to follow its bent,Grants him fulfillment and felicity on earth And forts to command in his own country.He permits him to lord it in many landsUntil the man in his unthinkingnessForgets that it will ever end for him.He indulges his desires; illness and old ageMean nothing to him; his mind is untroubledBy envy or malice or thought of enemiesWith their hate-honed swords. The whole worldConforms to his will, he is kept from the worstUntil an element of overweening Enters him and takes holdWhile the soul’s guard, its sentry, drowses,Grown too distracted. A killer stalks him,An archer who draws a deadly bow.And then the man is hit in the heart,The arrow flies beneath his defenses,The devious promptings of the demon start.His old possessions seem paltry to him now.He covets and resents; dishonors customAnd bestows no gold; and because of good things That the Heavenly powers gave him in the pastHe ignores the shape of things to come.Then finally the end arrivesWhen the body he was lent collapses and fallsPrey to its death; ancestral possessionsAnd the goods he hoarded and inherited by anotherWho lets them go with a liberal hand.“O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,Eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloomBut it fades quickly; and soon there will followIllness or the sword to lay you low,Or a sudden fire or surge of waterOr jabbing blade or javelin from the airOr repellent age. Your piercing eyeWill dim and darken; and death will arrive,Dear warrior, to sweep you away.
Seamus Heaney
Don’t have the veins bulging in your biro.
Seamus Heaney
To work, her dumb lunge says,is to move a certain mass...through a certain distance,is to pull your weight and feelexact and equal to it.Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.
Seamus Heaney
That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.
Seamus Heaney
Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.
Seamus Heaney
More than loud acclaim, I loveBooks, silence, thought, my alcove.Pangur BánPoem by Anon Irish Monk, Translated by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Fate goes ever as fate must.
Seamus Heaney
Mid-Term BreakI sat all morning in the college sick bayCounting bells knelling classes to a close.At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.In the porch I met my father crying—He had always taken funerals in his stride—And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramWhen I came in, and I was embarrassedBy old men standing up to shake my handAnd tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,Away at school, as my mother held my handIn hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.At ten o'clock the ambulance arrivedWith the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.Next morning I went up into the room. SnowdropsAnd candles soothed the bedside; I saw himFor the first time in six weeks. Paler now,Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
words...To lure the tribal shoals to epigram / And order.
Seamus Heaney
Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.
Seamus Heaney
The way we are living,timorous or bold,will have been our life.
Seamus Heaney
DiggingBetween my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look downTill his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands.By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner’s bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
The main thing is to writefor the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lustthat imagines its haven like your hands at nightdreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.Take off from here.
Seamus Heaney
He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
Seamus Heaney
I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job
Seamus Heaney
Since when," he asked,"Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?
Seamus Heaney
There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
Seamus Heaney
I rhymeTo see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
Seamus Heaney
I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
Seamus Heaney
All I know is a door into the dark
Seamus Heaney
If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
Seamus Heaney
History says, Don’t hopeOn this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up,And hope and history rhyme
Seamus Heaney
It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.
Seamus Heaney