Heaney’s imagery throughout the poem echoes the automation of the workers, illustrating the type of work that they do as something that could be done by machinery. As well, Heaney use of the word gun to describe his “squat pen” places the emphasis on machinery allowing a comparison of the human condition to present technology. This theme continues throughout the poem, as Heaney likens his father’s act of digging to that of a machine, “as his father nestled on the lug, the shaft/Against the inside knee was levered firmly.”
However, while Heaney describes the toil of his father, he also ties it to the alike labor of a past generation, namely his grandfathers, “used to nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods/Over his shoulder.” This juxtaposition of past and present illustrates the monotony of the work involved, and how things take time to change. Heaney creates the transition between his father and grandfather in a two-line stanza that highlights the pride of these men.
While, in the Poem of Twice Shy by Seamus Heaney, he had used nostalgic vivid realistic drawing of characters. In the opening lines, “Her scarf a la Bardot, In suede flats for the walk”, register the narrator’s attraction to the sophistication of the young woman. The couples, going out for an evening walk, cross the river, suggesting a decisive moment in the relationship. Implicit the title here is a cynicism embedded in the aphorism, once bitten twice shy, and which perhaps reflects the poets attitude to the relationships. Thus the poem works at the level of feeling, faithfully recording the emotions experienced, but the reader is also very aware of the poet simultaneously analyzing the feelings expressed. Thus the tone is one of detachment but also of involvement, shifting between wariness and excitement, and overridden by nervousness. Feelings are balanced by careful analytical thought through the perspective of the speaker.
Heaney had used many verbs pulsate with movement and energy, which suggest feelings barely held in control, reflective of natural human emotion. For example, “three stresses”, “traffic holding its breath” and “dusk hung like a backcloth”. Tension is noted between the surface casualness and falsity of the conversation, “Preserved classic decorum”, “Deployed our talk with art”, and the real powerful feelings underneath. “Traffic holding its breath/Sky a tense diaphragm” shows the sexual tension. The tension is also seen through the imagery, the idea of male as the hawk and female as the prey. Thematically the lyric deals with love, primitive love, and the excitement of sexual attraction.
The poem suggests that there is danger in love, that it can mean exposure to pain, that sexual love is a primitive instinct and it explores the thrilling tension and conflicting emotions experienced in the early days of a love relationships. “Not to publish feeling and regret it all too late”, but out fear of trusting the feelings. “Still waters running deap” notions of immature adolescent love affairs are symbolically conveyed through the river, and thus suggest powerful hidden currents of human emotion.
“That shook where a swan swam” used “the swan” with its romantic associations of fidelity, pairing for life, is perhaps a very obvious reference to lifelong mating between the couples. “As a thrush linked on a hawk” – The hawk and the thrush and the conations of prey have strong implications for the nature of the relationships. The hawk is described as a backcloth in second stanza. As a backcloth, the image of the hawk appears as beautiful, but lethal.
Through these the poems of Digging and Twice Shy, we could see that Heaney’s skill of portraying the vivid realistic drawing of characters through the use of imagery which is sometimes nostalgic or unflattering.
