Warm Eggs

Seamus Heaney reflects upon his collection Wintering Out in an interview, mentioning that it is "comfortless enough but with a notion of survival in it." In the poem "Servant Boy," Heaney demonstrates one individual's suffering through manipulation of language. He utilizes repetition to recreate the servant's trail of hardship, while infusing it with the recurring prospect of survival. Through repetition of language and imagery Heaney draws the reader into the highly personal reality of one oppressed individual. The boy's voice is filled with resentment, yet Heaney consistently restores his misery with hopeful imagery.

The poem begins with the pronoun he, yet as it continues, Heaney magnetically draws deeper into the servant's trail with the repetition of you, connecting to the boy's experience. Repetition of your and you in the third stanza carefully weaves the structure of the stanza together, creating a physical trail of rhythmic fluidity throughout the stanza:

"and kept your patience
and your counsel, how
you draw me into
your trail. Your trail (9-12)."

The passage has a steady pace that reflects the boy's trudging and perseverance through a hard winter. Furthermore, it ends in confidence, indicating that this is the boy's trail (Your trail), and he has authority over it. This is his tribulation, but additionally his chance to triumph. The patience and steady pacing also reinforces Heaney's own equanimity in regard to the conflict in Ireland, as he only meant to "gesture towards the distresses."

Repetition of hopeful imagery brightens all of the darker images that seem initially to overwhelm the poem. Beginning a poem with the "back-end of a bad-year" seems to be the most dismal and depressing means to start. Yet, the next image of a hurricane-lamp shines a metaphorical light through the servant's darkness and provides a message of inspiration that the end of his troubles is nearing. After the trail of the third stanza physically breaks, "broken from haggard to stable (13)," the boy's difficult trail has stabilized. This positive shift to stability is supported by the "snow," conjuring a fresh and new start, as well as the "first-footing," indicating a new step in a changed direction. The poem ends with the servant carrying warm eggs, a final and solidifying symbol of rebirth and entrance into a freer and more comfortable existence.

Heaney, Seamus "Mother Ireland." The Listener: December 7, 1972. (page 790)

Heaney, Seamus: Opened Ground. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.