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    The Haw Lantern: Poems
    The Haw Lantern: Poems
    The Haw Lantern: Poems
    Ebook63 pages22 minutes

    The Haw Lantern: Poems

    By Seamus Heaney

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    About this ebook

    This collection of thirty-one poems is Seamus Heaney's first since Station Island. The Haw Lantern is a magnificent book that further extends the range of a poet who has always put his trust in the possibilities of the language.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 13, 2014
    ISBN9781466855724
    The Haw Lantern: Poems
    Author

    Seamus Heaney

    Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His poems, plays, translations, and essays include Opened Ground, Electric Light, Beowulf, The Spirit Level, District and Circle, and Finders Keepers. Robert Lowell praised Heaney as the "most important Irish poet since Yeats."

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      Book preview

      The Haw Lantern - Seamus Heaney

      Alphabets

      I

      A shadow his father makes with joined hands

      And thumbs and fingers nibbles on the wall

      Like a rabbit’s head. He understands

      He will understand more when he goes to school.

      There he draws smoke with chalk the whole first week,

      Then draws the forked stick that they call a Y.

      This is writing. A swan’s neck and swan’s back

      Make the 2 he can see now as well as say.

      Two rafters and a cross-tie on the slate

      Are the letter some call ah, some call ay.

      There are charts, there are headlines, there is a right

      Way to hold the pen and a wrong way.

      First it is ‘copying out’, and then ‘English’

      Marked correct with a little leaning hoe.

      Smells of inkwells rise in the classroom hush.

      A globe in the window tilts like a coloured

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