Seamus Heaney's poem "The Haw Lantern ," part of a larger collection of short poems published in 1987, is not structured as a sonnet, nor does it exhibit the meter and rhyme schemes we associate with sonnets. A traditional Italian (also, Petrarchan) sonnet almost always contains fourteen lines,...
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divided into three sections, an octave (8 lines, a sestet (6 lines), and the rhyme is usually abba, abba (the octave) and cde cde (the sestet—the sestet rhyme may vary slightly. The English or Shakespearean sonnet is usually divided into four quatrains, with a rhymedcouplet and a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, and gg. The Spenserian sonnet is essentially a combination of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets.
As we can see by looking at "The Haw Lantern," Heaney does not use sonnet structure. Many sonnets in English use the most common rhythm in the language, which is iambic (an unstressed and stressed syllable) with five sets of iambs to make pentameter. If we scan "The Haw Lantern" line by line we will find that the meter is irregular and internal and end-line rhyme is nonexistent. Although the poem is replete with vivid imagery and metaphorical language, Heaney chooses function over traditional poetic form. The poem is actually closer to vers libre, free verse, or perhaps blank verse than it is to a highly-structured form like the sonnet.
This highly visual and allusive poem begins with lines that personify the hawthorn bush, one we associate with winter because the hawthorn's bright red berries are like beacons in a drab world:
The wintry haw is burning out of season,crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,wanting no more from them but that they keepthe wick of self-respect from dying out,not having to blind them with illumination.
But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frostIt takes the roaming shape of Diogeneswith his lantern, seeking one just man;so you end up scrutinized from behind the hawhe holds at eye-level on its twig,
and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you,it pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on