In the ivy when I leave.
-- Speaker (Lines 5, 36)

Importance: This repeated refrain appears twice in the poem: once immediately following the first stanza, and again at the very end. As this poem was the final inclusion in the collection District and Circle, this line also served as the last in the entire book. Here, “when I leave” takes on the greater meaning of leaving mortal reality behind, moving from this safe landscape of home to the next stage of the journey.

I want away / To the house of death, to my father 11 / Under the low clay roof.
-- Speaker (Lines 10-11)

Importance: Seamus Heaney was a prolific translator of old English and classical poetry. This line is likely a reference to his 1990 translation of Sophocles' play Philoctetes, which Heaney called The Cure at Troy. The image is inverted later in the poem when the speaker reflects on their “house of life” (Line 30). Fathers have also been a recurring...