Seamus Heaney Quotes

I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job

Bebeorh þé ðone bealo-níð, Béowulf léofa,
secg betsta, ond þé þæt sélre gecéos,
éce rǽdas; ofer-hýda ne gým,
mǽre cempa! Nú is þines mægnes blǽd
áne hwíle; eft sóna bið
þæt þec ádl oððe ecg eafoþes getwǽfeð,
oððe fýres feng oððe flódes wylm
oððe gripe méces oððe gáres fliht
oððe atol yldo, oððe éagena bearhtm
forsiteð ond forsworceð; semninga bið,
þæt ðec, dryht-guma, déað oferswýðeð.

O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.
Choose, dear Béowulf, the better part,
eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride.
For a brief while your strength is in bloom
but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow
illness or the sword to lay you low,
or a sudden fire or a surge of water
or jabbing blade or javelin from the air
or repellent age. Your piercing eye
will dim and darken; and death will arrive,
dear warrior, to sweep you away.

Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,
ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.
They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
laid out by the mast, amidships,
the great ring-giver. Far fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear.
I have never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail. The massed treasure
was loaded on top of him: it would travel far
on out into the ocean's sway.
They decked his body no less bountifully
with offerings than those first ones did
who cast him away when he was a child
and launched him alone over the waves.
And they set a gold standard up
high above his head and let him drift
to wind and tide, bewailing him
and mourning their loss. No man can tell,
no wise man in hall or weathered veteran
knows for certain who salvaged that load.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we’re shown?

Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

-Blackberry picking

The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse.

The dotted line my father's ashplant made
On Sandymount Strand
Is something else the tide won't wash away.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin's regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art was equal to it.

We were small and thought we knew nothing Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires In the shiny pouches of raindrops, Each one seeded full with the light Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves So infinitesimally scaled We could stream through the eye of a needle.

It is said that once upon a time St. Kevin was kneeling with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross in Glendalough. . . As Kevin knelt and prayed, a blackbird mistook his outstretched hand for some kind of roost and swooped down upon it, laid a clutch of eggs in it and proceeded to nest in it as if it were the branch of a tree. Then, overcome with pity and constrained by his faith to love all creatures great and small, Kevin stayed immobile for hours and days and nights and weeks, holding out his hand until the eggs hatched and the fledging grew wings, true to life if subversive of common sense, at the intersection of natural process and the glimpsed ideal, at one and the same time a signpost and a reminder. Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.