‘Follower’ is a poem which relates to his past life which can be regarded as a big space of time. This gap in time can be noticed by the regularity of the poem. The structure of the poem has an even number of four line stanzas and a combination of six stanzas in total.
There are about five sets of imagery in the poem, often the imagery in ‘Follower’ is based on the appearance of his father. For example in the first stanza on the second line he has written:
‘His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow’
This means that his father looks like a full sail strung from far because perhaps his shirt is being blown by the wind making him have the appearance of a full sail strung between the shafts and the furrow. This is also quite a magnificent piece of imagery as the sail of a ship is very important to the rest of the ship and is very magnificent, which is what Seamus Heaney is trying to tell us, as a child his father was magnificent and incredibly important to him. Seamus Heaney has not used many onomatopoeic words, he has only used the word ‘Clicking’ and ‘Yapping’. Seamus Heaney has used the word ‘clicking’ because in the whole sentence it can be translated that the horses are actually listening to him as if they know Seamus Heaney’s father. He has also used the word ‘yapping’ because he describes himself when he was younger.
There is a large amount of rhythm and rhyme throughout this poem. However, where the rhyming is at its strongest does heavily depend on the way in which the poem is spoken. The last verse of the poem is a very significant part and therefore a person reading the poem will probably choose to put more stress on the line ‘…today’ and ‘…away’. There is a regularity to the rhymes in this poem such as the rhymes ‘…strung’ and ‘…tongue’ in the first verse and ‘…round’ and ‘…ground’ in the third. The lines are mainly made up of eight or nine syllables but each stanza has got its own pattern in how these syllables are arranged. Therefore the metre of the poem is more or less iambic in tetrameters, which have four poetic feet which means they have eight syllables to each line. In my opinion the rhyme in the first verse is not as obvious as the rhyme in the last verse, I think htta Seamus Heaney would have made the last rhyme more obvious to bring out a significant point both in the poem and in his own life.
The concluding line I believe is the most powerful like in a lot of Heaney’s poems. It’s his father who stumbles now which can be interpreted as the stumbling of death and when Heaney writes that his father ‘will not go away’ this can be interpreted that his father will always remain in his heart.