Poem Strand At Lough Beg Essay Research

Poem: Strand At Lough Beg Essay, Research Paper

Christopher Cameron

Nov. 2001 ~

Lambert Poetry Paper

The Strand at Lough Beg

The Part of this poem that is to be looked at first is imagery in the title of the poem. Seamus Heaney starts us off by giving us this picture of the Strand at Lough Beg, which is the shore of a lake. Already the reader is given the starting point of this story; the Kind of person that Colum McCartney is.

Seamus Heamey begins the poem with an image of isolation, confusion, and the loss of safety. Heaney describes what happen the night that his cousin was killed:

Leaving the white glow of the filling stations

And a few lonely street lamps among the fields

You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton

Past the Fews Forest. Out beneath the stars- (lines 1-4)

The first few lines describe how his cousin started out in the glow of the gas station where he was, and him driving off to an open area in a town with the stars above him. The light here represented safety. Colum has started off in a situation where he was very close to this light: where there was, most likely, a store and other people. After he is done at the gas station he then drives away. Heaney gives us the image of the lampposts passing by as he drove. This shows how the light was now outside of where he was but it was still with him. Finally he drives up to Netownhamilton, passing some forests on the way and place where the only light that he is exposed to is the stars that are shining down at him from the sky. This now represents how the imminent safety that he had at the public gas station was now gone and he was isolated, in these hills only lit by stars. The safety in the light is now, far way: leaving him exposed to anything “outside”. The image of the first few lines is of Colum now isolated, surrounded by silence, and open to the dangers they may be lurking.

The succeeding lines are expressed through historical imagery.

Along that road, a high, bare pilgrim’s track

Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads.

Goat beards and dogs eyes in a demon pack

Blazing out of the ground snapping and squealing. (Lines 5-8)

In these few lines we are given this image of his cousin now driving down an isolated road. Heaney then bestows us with the gruesome image of these bloodied heads and animals: referring to the story of Sweeney. This new character that Heaney intimated us to, Sweeney, is an Irish king (around 1000AD) who was titled as a madman for savagely killing a saint. The incentive behind the use of Sweeney was to give the reader the idea that this road is dangerous of that something bad is going to happen. Even though the image of “Goat beards and dogs eyes in a demon pack / Blazing out of the ground snapping and Squealing” is quite appalling and startling, Heaney adds this in order to give the reader a feeling of the unreal, world and that what is happening, really shouldn’t be. “Blazing out of the ground snapping and squealing” represents how he thought the killers had approached his cousin: in a surprise and unexpected mode. There is a sense of his whole world being intruded upon.

It is now, in the middle of the first stanza, which we know that Seamus Heaney, himself, is not sure of what really happened that night. This is evident by the way he questions what he says is happening.

What blazed ahead of you. A faked roadblock.

The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling

Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold nosed gun.

Or in your driving mirror tailing headlights

That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down

Where you weren’t known and far from what you knew.

The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg.

Church Island’s spire its soft treeline of yew [Lines 9-16]

Here he uses present imagery to describe what happened, and to make it seem more possible. Again, I think, he uses analogies to light to represent the level of safety around his cousin while this was going on. In line ten, he applies the image of a “red lamp” swinging. In the beginning of the poem we had the image of a white light in our minds, which represented goodness, and purity, but now we have a drastic transition to a red light, which gives us more of a sharp and “warning” sense around him. From these lines we also, now, get the audio connection of what is happening. In line ten and eleven all what he describes is through what Colum must of heard when he made that abrupt stop. This effect make it even more horrifying because his Colum could probably sense what was going on and that he was in trouble. The description of the cold nose gun moreover makes it seem even more a brutal crime because it makes the killing seem more planned because the gun had still not been fired, as if the gun itself was waiting for him to come. In these lines we are taken back to the feeling of safety when Heaney says how Colum wasn’t in familiar territory: he was in hostile, protestant territory instead of Catholic. In referring to Lough Beg it implies that Colum’s land was peaceful and that there wasn’t any feeling of insecurity when you were there. In addition, he mentions that there is a Church near Lough Beg, giving the reader the sense that Lough Beg was a place to be considered close to sa

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