Seamus Heaney

Song

free verse

Song - meaning Summary

Local Speech, Lasting Song

Seamus Heaney's "Song" presents a rural roadside scene as a source of poetry. The speaker moves from the visible landscape to the sounds of local speech and birdsong, suggesting that true song grows out of ordinary life. The poem values both regional dialect and exact musical pitch, and it ends by linking art to lived experience.

Read Complete Analyses

A rowan like a lipsticked girl. Between the by-road and the main road Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance Stand off among the rushes. There are the mud-flowers of dialect And the immortelles of perfect pitch And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens.

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