Seamus Heaney poem about the scoundrel

"OCEAN'S LOVE TO IRELAND", SEAMUS HEANEY


I

Speaking broad Devonshire,
Raleigh has backed the maid to a tree
As Ireland is backed to England

And drives inland
Till all her strands are breathless:
' Sweesir, Swatter! Sweesir, Swatter! '

He is water, he is ocean, lifting
Her farthingale like a scarf of weed lifting
In the front of a wave.



II

Yet his superb crest inclines to Cynthia
Even while it runs its bent
In the rivers of Lee and Blackwater.

Those are the splashy spots where he would lay
His cape before her. In London, his name
Will rise on water and on these dark seepings:

Smerwick sowed with the mouthing corpses
Of six hundred papists, 'as gallant and good
Personages as ever where beheld'.



III

The ruined maid complains in Irish,
Ocean has scattered her dream of fleets,
The Spanish prince has spilled his gold

And failed her. Iambic drums
Of English beat the woods where her poets
Sink like Onan. Rush-light, mushroom-flesh,

She fades from their somnolent clasp
Into ringlet-breath and dew,
The ground possessed and repossessed.