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English Literature Revision: Mock 22nd May 2018Section A“Poetry”
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You must analyse in detail at
least four poems from each of your set texts
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Poem:
A Strand at Lough BegSeamus Heaney:
Could compare it to
Mametz wood because of
the references to
innocence and death
throughout the poems
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Mametz WoodOwen Sheers:

Social & Personal loss:
An Elegy about the
personal loss of his cousin
Colum McCartney
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Innocence; “white glow”,
“climbed the hills”, “waters
of Lough Beg”, “church
islands spire”, “soft treeline
of yew”, “honed bright”
“Lough Beg half shines
under the haze”, “To wash
you”, “I dab you clean with
moss”
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His
cousin was killed during a
political movement, also
known as a sectarian
killing
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This poem is about the
Battle of the Somme and

Connection-:
He uses rhetorical
questions like, “what
blazed ahead of you? A
faked road block?”, this
shows the sense of
urgency towards the death
of his cousin
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The
chiasmic declaration of
lineage “For you and yours
and yours and mine fought
shy”, is used to amplify
that he was innocent and
that it happens to innocent
people
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“for years after wards the
farmers found them- the

You could compare it to
the Strand at Lough Beg,
as they both mention the
references with innocence
and death
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They both make
references to bones, and
the fragility of them even
after death
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As the flood,
had killed the American
soldiers
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This is about the social
loss of the amount of
innocent people die in
political conflicts and how
they need to be
remembered for their
heroicness and their purity
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Innocence;
“young”, “tended”, “chit”,
“china plate”, “relic”, “birds
egg”, “nesting”, “earth”,
“sung”, “white”, “blue”
...
He emphasizes
how these young soldiers
were innocent and their
lives were cut short
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A farmer
warned the foreign soldiers
not to take up camp on the
valley because there is
most likely going to be a
flood
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There
are images of the
Pastoral/nature; “a
thousand tents across the
valley floor”, “they felt the
backbone of the rock,
shallow beneath the soil”,
“through the ditches,
streams and bracken”,
“they slept to the sound of

wasted young, turning up
under their plough blades”
~ “the wasted young”, had
a dramatic significance on
how the innocent young
soldier’s lives went to
waste
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“a chit of bone, the china
plate of a shoulder blade”,
~ comments on how fragile
their lives were in the face
of machine guns and how
even though they are
broken, they are still
precious
...
Could be a
reminiscent of the parents
with their children
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The river was personified,
“the river pulled herself up
and spread her wings”,
“they raised the alarm, but
it was already too late and
the river, arming herself
with their rifles” ~ this
shows that no matter how
trained you are, nature will
always win, due to how
powerful it is
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The “unknown date hung
somewhere over the
horizon” ~ adds to the
mystery and the
foreshadowing of the flood
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Ye Gear (the Hill Fort), &
The Hill Fort (Ye Gear)Owen Sheers:

You could compare this to
Liable to Floods, as they
both use the land to
represent their losses
...
Whereas, in Ye
Gear, Sheers uses a storm
to reflect the emotions of
what the father was going
through when he had lost
his son and the grief he
had felt at that sudden
loss
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3

These poems express the
different feelings and
perspectives of how its like
to lose a child
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An elegy written for a
friend who had lost their
son
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Sheers uses
pastoral imagery to
personify the fathers
feeling of the loss of his
son in the car accident
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In
Ye Gear it could be a
metaphor for the father
and his reaction to the loss
of his son, but also could
be a metaphor for the son
and the car accident with
“smoking embers”
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~ “skeletons paused mid
dance macabre” ~ the
Strand at Lough Beg,
dance of death, no matter
the rank everyone dies
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The
opening stanza of this
poem represents how
vulnerable and defensive
the man is feeling over the
loss of his son
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‘Ring of
gorse, sown yellow in
winter’, a ‘ring’ is an
endless circle, gorse is a
spiky plant that can inflict
pain, and winter is a cold
and bitter season
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“takes the rains beating the
hails pepper shot and
shout into the storm”, Here
we see the man using the
weather as a way of
gaining physical pain to
reduce his emotional pain
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“three-sixty”,
indicates that the scenery
surrounds the father
completely, which gives
the image of it being
overpowering emotionally
and physically
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All of these

A further evaluation from
Philip Allan suggests that
‘Y Gear’ also known as the
fort shown as a place
where a man has lost his
son and is now able to
express his anger on the
issue
...
Which could
show that the father has
now accepted the loss of
either the separation or his
child
...
By the end of
the poem there is
continuous imagery of the
weather (pathetic fallacy)
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He’s suffering
internally, so uses the wind
to ease his pain, which
also gives off a sense of
comfort
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“When he finally got him
still”, the fact that the father
had to keep his son still,
implies that he has lots of
energy and is in good
health
...
In stanza three, “he’d
crouch so their eyes were
level”, emphasizes the
closeness between the
farther and son
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The imagery of “scattered
grains”: symbolism for birth
and death
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Overall sense of closure

5



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