The Hospital
The Hospital - fact Summary
Written from Hospital Experience
Kavanagh’s speaker describes falling in love with the ordinary details of a chest hospital ward, finding beauty in square cubicles, basins and a gravelled yard. The poem argues that love transforms the mundane into objects of affection; naming them becomes a pledge to preserve their significance. It frames this attention as a way to record love’s fleeting mystery, drawn from the poet’s own experience of illness and time in hospital.
Read Complete AnalysesA year ago I fell in love with the functional ward Of a chest hospital: square cubicles in a row Plain concrete, wash basins - an art lover’s woe, Not counting how the fellow in the next bed snored. But nothing whatever is by love debarred, The common and banal her heat can know. The corridor led to a stairway and below Was the inexhaustible adventure of a gravelled yard. This is what love does to things, the Rialto Bridge, The main gate that was bent by a heavy lorry, The seat at the back of the shed that was a suntrap. Naming these things is the love-act and its pledge; For we must record love’s mystery without claptrap, Snatch out of time the passionate transitory.
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