His shoulders globed like a full sail strung.”
Heaney’s father had all the horses to do the hard, manual work for him, as it was easier: “The horses strained at his clicking tongue.”
In stanza two, his father gets ready to attach the sharp steel blade to his horse-plough, like a professional because he knows what he is doing exactly. He is an expert:
“An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.”
Stanza three, Heaney uses alliteration to show the “t” sound:
“…The sweating team turned…”
Heaney’s father wants to get his furrow exactly right as he is a professional and likes everything just so, by pushing his horses until they are hot and sweaty:
“Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.”
In the stanza four Heaney concentrates more on his personal feelings about his father and himself. He tried to copy his father, to be exactly like the great Irish ploughman which he saw his farther to be. He was of little use at that young age:
“I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell Sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back.”
In the fifth stanza Heaney explains how he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wants to grow up and be a great ploughman like his own father.
“I want to grow up and plough”
He does not want to keep following in his father’s shadow;
“All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.”
Finally the sixth stanza. Heaney eventually confesses that he was a nuisance in his early years and over time had grown up to become like his father.
“I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always,”
His father now swaps places with his son and it is now his father who is a nuisance, falling, tripping, stumbling behind because he has grown too old to keep up and work.
“But today, it is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.”
Stanza one of the poem “Rookery” starts with the rooks flying past the sun, a metaphor,
“Here they come, freckling the sunset,”
It means a flock of rook’s cover the sun, which makes it look like a face full of freckly patches against the bright, round sun.
“…Bearing down on the plantation.”
That means the rooks land upon a land of trees or bushes. They are compared to ‘slow sailors’ with there smooth flight. This is personification.
In stanza two the rooks settle down on the twigs and branches and have to wait for the farmer the finish his farming. This is personification.
“There is nothing else to do now only settle.”
Waiting for the farmer to leave. Heaney helps to express the sharp movement of the scratches.
Stanza three,
“But they keep up guttural chat”
The ‘a’ and the ‘u’ sounds help to express this harsh voice.
That means the rooks are squawking and chirping using their throaty noises to communicate with each other as humans do when we talk.
“Something’s satisfied in the caw.”
“Who wouldn’t come to rest like that?”
He feels that the rooks seem happy and content. He humorously compares them to humans.
Heaney shows his interest in Irish farming and love for nature in these two poems. He shows his love for farming in the “Follower”. He talks about his dad, who is the expert ploughman and how he wants to be just like him in the future and follow in his footsteps.
Heaney loves nature. “Rookery” shows that Heaney saw the rooks as more than birds. The poem tells us that he saw the flock of rooks as his friends and something he could relate to. They were friends to keep him company while working on the farm and with his life in general. They seem to be happy and peaceful and have a real sense of purpose in their life together.
