Two common themes that Seamus Heaney and Emily Dickinson address in their poems are insights into nature and the figurative connection between natural states, such as the seasons, to the human condition.
Both themes are evident in two poems that are concerned with winter: Heaney’s “The Haw Trees” and Dickinson’s “”There’s a Certain Slant of Light.” Each in their distinctive way, the poets connect winter with light and the changing seasons with changing human feelings. While the most likely approach to the onset of winter would be association with coldness and possibly regret at the shortening days, neither poet takes that simple route.
In “The Haw Trees,” Heaney’s speaker emphasizes a specific quality of light that emanates from a plant, the “wintry haw.” Although it is associated with the colder season, the haw is “burning”; in this way it provides “a small light for small people,” which suggests a glimmer...
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of hope for ordinary people. The speaker also personifies the haw, endowing it with feelings for the people rather than the more obvious or literal association of telling the human feelings toward the plant or toward the season: “wanting no more from them” and “not having to blind them.” The speaker thus suggests that humans should be attuned to the subtle clues all around them, rather than expect a harsh glare of “illumination” or insight.
In Dickinson’s work, the poem’s speaker also points to the particular kind of light associated with winter, “a certain Slant of light.” In contrast to Heaney, however, this speaker sees that light as oppressive or heavy, comparing its weight to “the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes.” Such a weight even causes “hurt” that, as it comes from a “heavenly” source, provides “internal difference,” or the changing “meanings” of personal transformation, insights but does not inflict permanent damage—“We can find no scar.” This “internal difference” can be compared to Heaney’s “wick of self-respect,” which suggests personal integrity.
What common themes exist between the poetry of Heaney and Shakespeare?
Shakespeare’s influence on Seamus Heaney’s poems—written centuries later—is evident not only in style and form, but also in their mutual exploration of how mortality reflects earth’s cyclical changes. According to nature, day must turn into night, summer must turn into winter, and nothing beautiful can last forever. Several Shakespearean sonnets allude to how the human lifespan reflects this reality—yet both Heaney and Shakespeare find solace in the laws of nature by portraying the comparative timelessness of poetry.
Both poets depict the theme of mortality by investigating how nature’s course as a function of time reflects transitions between seasons. Time is an inevitable constraint, as Shakespeare illustrates with his words “Time will come and take my love away” in Sonnet 64. Nature determines fate, and death comes closer as green leaves turn to brown and day turns to night. Accordingly, in the first of the “Glanmore Sonnets,” Heaney describes how his spirit transitions between seasons, with the poem beginning in “the mildest February for twenty years” and awaiting spring:
Wait then ... Breasting the mist, in sowers’ aprons,
My ghosts come striding into their spring stations.
The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.
By referencing Easter, celebrated by many as the resurrection of Christ from the dead, Heaney suggests that perhaps his ghosts symbolize rebirth; on the other hand, the foreboding image of “freakish Easter snows” could symbolize the anticipation of death.
By illustrating nature’s role in dictating mortality, Shakespeare and Heaney also show how words, in contrast, have immortal power. Heaney illustrates how words are eternal in the second of the “Glanmore Sonnets” with the lines
Vowels ploughed into other, opened ground
Each verse returning like the plough turned round.
In much the same was as a farmer cultivates his crops, poets cultivate words to express everlasting truths of existence. As Shakespeare demonstrates in Sonnet 18, poetry has the power to transcend time while also working in tandem with earth’s natural cycles; although
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date ...
When in eternal lines to time though growest ...
Thus, time is not always a constraint, and both Shakespeare and Heaney convey how poetry immortalizes beauty by using powerful language and diving deeply into timeless themes.