Peace
Peace - fact Summary
Kavanagh's Rural Roots
Kavanagh's "Peace" dwells on the quiet rhythms of rural life and a speaker’s wistful attachment to childhood countryside scenes. Simple agricultural images — hedges, ploughs, turf banks, a hare — create a world where everyday labor and talk replace grand struggles. The poem contrasts this grounded contentment with the human urge to confront abstract forces, asking why people leave the ordinariness of home to battle Love, Life, and Time.
Read Complete AnalysesAnd sometimes I am sorry when the grass Is growing over the stones in quiet hollows And the cocksfoot leans across the rutted cart-pass That I am not the voice of country fellows Who now are standing by some headland talking Of turnips and potatoes or young corn Of turf banks stripped for victory. Here Peace is still hawking His coloured combs and scarves and beads of horn. Upon a headland by a whinny hedge A hare sits looking down a leaf-lapped furrow There's an old plough upside-down on a weedy ridge And someone is shouldering home a saddle-harrow. Out of that childhood country what fools climb To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time?
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