William Blake and Seamus Heaney were both visionaries and social critics, who presented their strong attitudes towards society through writing critical poems in protest against the corruptions of society. Blake’s poems were based around the transition of idealised agrarian lifestyle changing to an urbanised society, written in the 1700’s. Heaney’s poems were written much later on during the 19th century, to present his strong attitudes towards war, violence, and conflict within society.
Blake and Heaney used metaphorical imagery to present negative consequences from the oppressions of religion and the establishment of the Church towards society. Blake’s The Garden …show more content…
Heaney’s poem The Other Side is presented in three different sections and three lines per stanza, symbolising the three persons within the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This complements the main theme of the poem, the politically controversial sectarian divide throughout Northern Ireland, between Protestants and Roman Catholics. He cleverly presents this ecclesiastical separation using structural devices, along with nature to create the understanding of how absurd the division is. This is represented by the ironically close geographical proximity between their lands “to meet our fallow,” suggesting how they are blind to the truth of how close their beliefs are. Furthermore, the long lengths of the lines in the third stanza represents the respect they had for their “neighbour”, as they patiently waited outside for each other to finish before disturbing the other, showing hope for his future idealist visions.
Blake’s The Garden of love is a deceptively simple three stanza poem, made up of four quatrains. The first two stanzas follow a classic rhythmic ABCB scheme, but this is broken in the final stanza. This deprivation of rhythm and the bleak vocabulary “graves” “tomb-stones” emphasises the death and decay taken over by the authoritative churches, a contrast to the once beautiful “green” where “sweet flowers” used to “bore” in the first two