The Harvest Bow

Introduction

The harvest marks the end of the growing season and a good crop is crucial to the success of the farm. Some farmers would take a handful of wheat stalks and twist and tie them into quite intricate and beautiful designs. These harvest bows might be placed on the dining table or hung above the door as a blessing and thanks for a good yield.

They were also offered as tokens of affection. In Seamus Heaney’s “The Harvest Bow”, the speaker looks at this “throwaway love-knot of straw” and fondly remembers the time when he walked home with his father.

Seamus Heaney Reads “The Harvest Bow”

The Harvest Bow’s Significance

When his father “plaited the harvest bow”, the speaker believes he “implicated” his personality into its curves and knots. Heaney plays with the various definitions of the verb to implicate. It is commonly used to describe someone’s involvement with a crime or to indirectly imply a connection. Although the harvest bow is a gesture of affection, the verb choice suggests his father is reluctant to express his emotions because he feels it is somehow wrong.

Interestingly, to implicate is derived from the Latin implicō, which meant to interweave. Although it has lost that definition, Heaney chose the word because it links with the image of his father weaving the harvest bow. Therefore, despite his doubt, his father allows himself to become intimately connected with the “fragile device” and conveys his feelings of love for his son.

In this way, the harvest bow becomes incredibly important to the speaker because it reveals the wonderful depth of their bond.

Father And Son

In the second line, the speaker refers to his father’s “mellowed silence”, which suggests a compassionate and gentle nature. Since the adjective has connotations of ripeness and maturity, linking his father to the theme of harvest, it also signifies how his temperament has grown and softened over time.

This quiet demeanor is mentioned again at the end of the fourth verse when the speaker describes “that original townland” as “tongue-tied in the straw”. Perhaps he was unable to articulate his affection through language because he belonged to a generation who were more reserved when it came to expressing their feelings.

Therefore, the harvest bow becomes his way of communicating his paternal love for the speaker who then decodes its meaning. He can “tell and finger it like braille”. In the same way the tactile writing system can convey information, the points and turns of wheat are tangible and combine to reveal that unspoken love between the father and son. Notice how the noun “fingers” becomes the verb “finger” when Heaney tries to interpret the harvest bow.

The poet continues this idea in the next line when he is “gleaning the unsaid off the palpable”. The verb “glean” is very effective. The speaker is describing how he reads and learns about his father’s love through the harvest bow. However, the word also means to gather, especially a person who lifts the remaining grain when they follow the lead harvesters. This positions the speaker as the junior partner in the relationship who is eager to learn the skills of reaping from his more experienced father.

Since the harvest bow is “palpable” and he “pinned” it “up on our deal dresser”, the “throwaway love-knot of straw” continues to have more of an impact than language could ever achieve. This deep connection is reinforced by the use of the inclusive pronoun “our”. The simple gesture of the harvest bow brought them closer together.

Hands

Heaney returns to the image of his father’s hands several times in the poem. At the start of the second verse, the poet describes how his father’s “hands” had “aged round ashplants and cane sticks”. It is important to note that “cane sticks” usually support more weight than “ashplants” so their position in the line also implies his father became increasingly dependent on them as he grew older.

In the fourth verse, when they are walking home, the speaker observed his father “whacking the tips off weeds and bushes” with his “stick”. These images suggest walking sticks were an intrinsic part of his character and he was rarely seen without one.

The violence of the onomatopoeic “whacking” echoes the image of how his hands “lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks”. To prevent the combative birds from attacking each other, farmers would wrap their claws and spurs in cloth. Subduing roosters bred for their intense aggression required a lot of skill and strength.

Although the saplings of ash trees were shaped into walking sticks and sturdy cane sticks helped with balance and movement, they were also used for self-defence, especially in isolated rural locations. Finally, school boys of Heaney’s generation were often “canned” if they were caught misbehaving. This could imply the speaker’s father had a stricter streak to his personality.

In these examples, Heaney defines his father as the pragmatic farmer who walked and worked the land. However, other references reveal a more delicate and artistic use of the hands.

Heaney describes how his father’s hands “harked to their gift” like they were sentient and determined to listen to their talent. The personification continues in the next line when the poet is mesmerised by how his father’s “fingers moved somnambulant”. This hyperbole suggests his “gift” was so wonderful, he could fashion the harvest bow in his sleep.

Since the verb “harked” also means to remember, Heaney appreciates how his father could have wasted his “gift” on the harsh physicality of the farm, but he “worked with fine intent” to create the intricate and beautiful “love-knot of straw”.

Of course, the word “gift” could also refer to the harvest bow. Once again, the poet plays with the meanings of words and their ambiguities in the same way his father was able to expertly play with the straw to fashion it into something artistic.

That Original Townland

The third verse shifts from the present to a memory of childhood. Looking through the “golden loops” of the harvest bow, the speaker describes walking home with his father after spending the day fishing – an archetypal representation of growing up:

“And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall—”

The way the “blue smoke” is able to drift “straight up” and the reference to “midges”, which do not swarm in the air if it is windy, suggest the “evening” is serene. That quiet calmness reflects the father’s “mellowed silence” and the speaker’s contentment.

The list of the landmarks mentioned by Heaney might seem like a straightforward depiction of the setting that conveys the serenity of the moment, but some of the images subtly suggest the inevitable end of summer and the poet’s own childhood.

For example, they pass by “old beds and ploughs in hedges”. The harvest is the gathering of crops at the end of the growing season, but the other obvious signifier which carries a strong sense of finality is the reference to “evening” in the third verse and then “evenings” in the fourth. The repetition emphasises the inescapable feeling of closure which most readers will easily understand.

Even the reference to the “auction notice on an outhouse wall” suggests change. However, it has a specific significance to Heaney because his family sold their farmhouse, which was called Mossbawn, and moved to Bellaghy when he was fourteen. This relocation is also suggested by the demonstrative adjective “that” used to describe the “original townland”. In some ways, Heaney left the “original” landscape and his childhood behind when they moved to their new home.

Another example of change can be found in the “railway slopes” they “walk between” because that line is no longer used but many of the cuttings remain.

Heaney is “already homesick / For the big lift of these evenings”. From the child’s point of view, he would soon be returning to boarding school at St Columb’s College in Derry, far away from his home and the freedom of summer. From the writer’s perspective, these places are fixed in the past and, sometimes, only the idyllic memory and the emotions they evoke remain.

That idea is epitomised by the way his father whacks the “tips off weeds and bushes” with his stick but his “beats” are “out of time” and he “flushes nothing”. Life is transient so it is important to remember the “original” times we share with the ones we love. Fortunately, the harvest bow is a memento of that history the speaker can continue to cherish.

Authorial Intention

“A harvest bow is a little piece of wheat that is plaited and turned into a bow and my father simply made it without thinking every year. When I moved to Wicklow, when I was in my thirties, I thought I would like to have one of those myself and I got him to make me one. I wore it in my lapel and I thought that is a bit folksy for me to be wearing. I felt I had every right to it but at the same time it was just a wee bit heritagy, and so I took it and pinned it up on the dresser and wrote this poem about it.”

Extract from “Writers in Conversation Volume 5” by Christopher Bigsby and Published in 2013 by Unthank Books.

Lyrical Structure

Consisting of five stanzas with six lines each, Heaney weaves a beautiful musicality throughout the poem that echoes the harvest bow’s complex design. There are the obvious rhymes in the couplets, such as the fuller rhyming of “hand” and “townland” in the fourth verse, or the half-rhymes in “rust” and “twist” from the opening stanza. The end rhyme of “intent” and “somnambulant” is inventive, but it also marks the shift from his father concentrating on creating the harvest bow to him being able to do it without thinking.

The rhythm of turning and knotting the stalks into bows can be heard in the simple internal rhyme used to describe how the wheat “brightens as it tightens” and then in the repetition “twist by twist”. The cadence is helped by alliteration of /b/ in “but”, “brightens” and “by”, and the consonance of /t/ running throughout the fourth line.

The second stanza opens with the breathy assonance in “hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks” which reinforces the tight knots of the harvest bow.

The doubling-back of the wheat stalks can be found in the interesting positioning of “you” at the start and end of the second line or the twisting of words in “still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand” which conclude the fourth stanza. There is also the use of alliteration in lines such as “whacking the tips off weeds and bushes” or “slipped lately by the spirit of the corn” where the repetition creates a metronomic rhythm.

Perhaps the best example of Heaney shaping the narrative through the sounds of words is the way he further connects his father with the harvest bow by echoing “plaited” with “implicated” through off-rhyme and the “you” that precedes both of them. Put simply, he creates a brilliantly lyrical poem that appeals to the listener and demonstrates the harvest bow’s aesthetic.

The Love-knot

The last stanza returns to the present when the speaker has “pinned” the harvest bow to his “dresser” to remind him of his father’s “gift” and the time he spent growing up in Mossbawn. Heaney labels it a “frail device”, celebrating its elaborate design and recognising how easily it can be destroyed.

He also compares it to a “drawn snare” which has “slipped”. The simile is appropriate because they are both looped and knotted, but the trap suggests Heaney was trying to capture their shared past when he asked his father to create the harvest bow.

The final line describes the “love-knot of straw” as shiny and smooth. It is also “still warm”. Despite the destructive “passage” of time, the relationship between the speaker and his father remains “warm” and loving.

The Motto

Artists give their paintings, sculptures and poems a title which can then anchor the audience’s interpretation of the work. Heaney gives the harvest bow a motto: “the end of art is peace”.  On one level, the “fragile device”, referring to the fanciful design of the harvest, achieves a moment of harmony between the father and son, but that “peace” is transient because the rabbit has “slipped” the “snare”.

The word “device” can also denote a literary device or conceit in a narrative. Therefore, the “fragile device” could refer Heaney’s “The Harvest Bow” and his skill as a writer. Again, this creates a sense of rapport between the two men.

The motto could also have wider significance. For example, it suggests artists are inspired by the conflict in their lives and are motivated towards “peace”. Many commentators read the italicised opening line in terms of the conflict in Northern Ireland which were euphemistically labelled as The Troubles.

None of these meanings seem to be prioritised so it is up to reader to discover their own interpretation of “The Harvest Bow”.

Comprehension Questions

1. What is a harvest bow?
2. Suggest why Heaney chose the word “implicated” to describe his father’s effects plaiting the wheat?
3. What impression is created of the father in the phrase “the mellowed silence in you”?
4. How does Heaney surprise the reader by commenting that “wheat that does not rust”?
5. What happens to the wheat once it is weaved and twisted?
6. Why is the metaphor describing the harvest bow as a “knowable corona” effective?
7. What antithesis are used in the opening stanza?
8. How does Heaney highlight his father’s farming skills in the second stanza?
9. Heaney described his father’s “mellowed silence” in the first stanza. How is this image reinforced in the second stanza?
10. What does the verb “spy” suggest about Heaney and his father’s relationship?
11. What memories does the speaker share in the third stanza? What is the tone of these recollections?
12. Suggest why Heaney includes the reference to him holding the “fishing rod”.
13. If the father has a delicate side to him, epitomised by his plaiting of wheat, what impression is created of him in the fourth stanza?
14. What does “tongue-tied” suggest about his father?
15. Suggest why the poet begins the final stanza with an allusion to Yeats.
16. What does the “motto” imply about his father’s emotions?
17. Most people would refer to the piece of furniture as “dresser”. Why does highlight the composition of it as “deal”?
18. The wheat may have been weaved and trapped into position like a “snare”. What else is caught in the harvest bow? Look particularly at the word “spirit” and how it is still “warm”.
19. Why is Heaney’s use of enjambment throughout this poem appropriate and effective?
20. What other structural elements are important to your interpretation of the poem?