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“Bogland” Introduction
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"Bogland" is the final poem in Seamus Heaney's second collection, Door into the Dark (1969). It describes the peat bogs (wetlands composed of dead plant matter) that cover a large fraction of Ireland's landscape. Thousands of years' worth of animals and artifacts lie buried in this slippery terrain, which, as the speaker notes, is more cramped than the wild landscapes of other countries. As a result, Ireland's "pioneers" dig down into their country's history rather than expanding outward. Yet Irish history and identity, the poem suggests, are as multi-layered, shifting, and unstable as the land itself.
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“Bogland” Summary
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Our country (Ireland) doesn't have any wide-open grassland, the kind that cuts cleanly across the setting sun. Everywhere we look, our eye is limited by a horizon that seems to lean in on us, or drawn to a mountain lake that looks like the single eye of an ancient monster.
The open country here is wetland, which keeps crusting over between sunrise and sunset.
Paleontologists have dug the skeleton of the prehistoric Irish elk out of the peat bogs and reconstructed it like an amazing, empty container.
Butter that had been buried in the bogs for more than a century has been dug up, still salty and fresh-looking. The boggy earth itself is like dark, soft butter, melting and caving as you step on it; it hasn't been solid in millions of years.
No one will ever find fossil fuels buried here—just the trunks of huge evergreen trees, soaked to mush.
The pioneers in our country head down into the land's interior, and every layer they uncover seems to have been previously occupied.
The sinkholes in the bog may be caused by water seeping in from the Atlantic Ocean. The land has no firm foundation; it leads down to the bottomless sea.
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“Bogland” Themes
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The Irish Landscape and National Identity
On one level, "Bogland" simply describes the bog country of Ireland; on another, it examines Irish identity in all its multi-layered slipperiness and strangeness. The speaker, who seems to speak on behalf of Ireland, contrasts the cramped, wet, marshy Irish landscape with the wide-open, solid terrain of other countries. What the environment lacks in breadth, the speaker suggests, it makes up for in depth: the bogland preserves layer after layer of the country's history. At the same time, the bogland is also precarious and ever-changing, a slippery terrain that appears to be "bottomless." Through its portrait of the land, the poem symbolically suggests that Irish identity (or perhaps national or human identity in general) is impossible to get to the bottom of.
The poem vividly describes the distinctive "bogland" of Ireland, contrasting it with other kinds of landscapes abroad. The speaker declares that "We have no prairies" (as America, for example, famously does). The landscape of Ireland feels more cramped and bounded, with the "horizon" seeming to close in "Everywhere." Moreover, "Our unfenced country" is not grassland but wetland, or "bog"—something much less picturesque and much less solid.
Through all of these descriptions of the landscape, the poem implicitly contrasts Ireland's history and identity with those of other countries. "They'll never dig coal here" suggests that the land isn't useful in terms of traditional extraction and exploitation. It holds rewards that aren't utilitarian, such as tree trunks "soft as pulp" and other natural wonders. These are the kinds of discoveries that would appeal to a poet or historian, not a mining company.
And the bog is indeed rich in history, preserving incredible artifacts unearthed by paleontologists and archeologists (the skeletons of ancient mammals, buried butter that's still "salty," etc.). In fact, in its endless layers, it seems to contain and stand for the whole history of Ireland since antiquity. "Our pioneers" (again unlike America's, perhaps) thus move "Inwards and downwards" rather than outwards. Symbolically, they explore the internal rather than the external, taking a journey of knowledge rather than one of conquest.
And yet, the landscape is so shifty and "bottomless" that it becomes impossible to define, suggesting that Irish identity (and/or human identity more broadly) might have no solid "centre" at all. Comparing the country's "tarn[s]" (lakes) to the eyes of "cyclops" (one-eyed monsters from Greek mythology), the speaker suggests there's something treacherous about the Irish landscape. And comparing the bog to "black butter / Melting and opening underfoot," the speaker portrays the land as almost hopelessly slippery.
In fact, the land has "Miss[ed] its last definition / By millions of years," suggesting that Ireland itself, or the identity and experience of the Irish people, has always been and always will be undefinable. Observing that "The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage" (might lead to the Atlantic Ocean), the speaker concludes that "The wet centre is bottomless." The quest to understand the land seems to end out at sea—in other words, completely unresolved, with no solid foundation whatsoever.
The speaker can say what the landscape isn't, then, but can't reach a firm sense of what it is. By extension, Irish identity—or even human identity, from the speaker's point of view—is permanently slippery and shifting, something that can never be understood to its core.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-28
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Bogland”
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Lines 1-4
We have no ...
... Encroaching horizon,The first stanza begins by describing the poem's setting: the "Bogland" of the title. Interestingly, it prefaces this description (lines 3-4 onward) with a statement (lines 1-2) about what the bogland is not: a flat, grassy expanse stretching clear to the horizon.
"We have no prairies," the speaker says, "To slice a big sun at evening." Context suggests that the speaker, a collective "We," represents the Irish people as a whole. (Ireland is famous for its extensive bogland, and the mention of the "Great Irish Elk" in line 10 further hints that this is a poem about Ireland. Heaney was also well known for writing about his native country.)
The phrase "slice a big sun at evening" evokes a familiar visual image: the setting sun cut into a wedge shape as it sinks below the flat horizon, like a piece of fruit being sliced by a blade. This doesn't happen in Ireland, the speaker notes, because "Everywhere" you look in the Irish landscape, "the eye concedes to / Encroaching horizon." That is, the horizon line isn't flat: it contains hills, mountains, and so on, which seem to lean toward viewers and "Encroach[]" on their space. The viewer's eye has to "concede[]," or acquiesce, to this encroachment; even if it might want a more spacious landscape, there's none available.
The speaker is thus juxtaposing Ireland's landscape with those of other, more wide-open countries. Although flat, grassy plains exist in other parts of the world, including Eurasia (where they're called the "steppes"), the word "prairie" is particularly associated with the Great Plains of North America. Combined with the later reference to "pioneers" (line 23), the word "prairie" suggests that Heaney is most likely contrasting Ireland with the U.S. (He went on to teach in the U.S. the year after Door into the Dark, which contains "Bogland," was published, so perhaps the country was already on his mind.)
This opening stanza also establishes the form the rest of the poem will follow: free-verse quatrains (four-line stanzas) with relatively short lines. Fully half of the poem's lines are enjambed, as lines 1 and 3 are here, smoothing the flow of the language from line to line. This relative smoothness fits a poem about terrain that, as lines 16-19 describe, slips and slides around like "butter."
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Lines 5-8
Is wooed into ...
... of the sun.
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Lines 9-12
They've taken the ...
... full of air. -
Lines 13-16
Butter sunk under ...
... kind, black butter -
Lines 17-22
Melting and opening ...
... soft as pulp. -
Lines 23-28
Our pioneers keep ...
... centre is bottomless.
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“Bogland” Symbols
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Bogs
Over the course of the poem, the "Bogland" of Ireland becomes a symbol of Irish history and identity. The terrain of a country is often used to symbolize its people and culture; Americans, for example, sometimes treat the vast prairies, deserts, and mountains of the U.S. as representative of something open, free, adventurous, etc. in their national character.
In contrast with this kind of open terrain, the bogland feels relatively confined; it doesn't stretch all the way out to a flat "horizon." But while it may lack breadth, it contains great depths. "We have no prairies" to spread out over, the poem's speaker says; instead, "Our pioneers keep striking / Inwards and downwards." It becomes the site of an interior journey, into the country's ancient history (embodied by everything buried in the bog, from prehistoric animals to human-made butter).
In its endless "layers," it seems to contain Ireland's entire past, including everything that has formed its national character. At the same time, it seems to have no firm "centre"; it's as "bottomless" as the sea.
Symbolically, then, the poem presents Irish identity as profound, multi-layered, yet unstable—something perpetually remade rather than fixed in stone.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 6-28
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“Bogland” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
The poem's vivid imagery conveys the appearance and consistency (or inconsistency) of the treacherous "Bogland."
According to the speaker, the bog is "wet," full of "bogholes," and ultimately as "bottomless" as the sea, because its watery "seepage" comes from the "Atlantic" Ocean. It's so damp beneath the surface that it reduces "great firs" to "waterlogged trunks / [...] soft as pulp." However, the surface "keeps crusting" over in the daytime heat, making it walkable, if hazardous.
Though most of the poem's imagery appeals to the senses of sight and touch, some startling taste imagery enters lines 13-15:
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.Because the cool bog acts as a preservative, pre-modern Irish communities buried food containers in it, using it as a crude form of refrigeration. Some of those containers have indeed been "recovered" over the years, and some have contained dairy (known as bog butter) that's remarkably well-preserved. The poem describes a specimen of this butter, aged "More than a hundred years," as "salty and white"—practically daring the reader to imagine taking a bite.
The poem then compares the boggy "ground" itself to butter. The adjectives "kind," "black," "Melting," and "opening" turn this metaphor into a vivid image. They indicate that the soil is soft (figuratively, "kind") and very dark, and that it slips around and caves in as you walk over it. (Notice, too, how the "white" literal butter makes for a striking visual contrast with the "black," figurative butter.)
Where imagery appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “We have no prairies / To slice a big sun at evening—”
- Lines 6-7: “Our unfenced country / Is bog that keeps crusting”
- Lines 13-17: “Butter sunk under / More than a hundred years / Was recovered salty and white. / The ground itself is kind, black butter / Melting and opening underfoot,”
- Lines 21-22: “Only the waterlogged trunks / Of great firs, soft as pulp.”
- Lines 27-28: “The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. / The wet centre is bottomless.”
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Alliteration
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Metaphor
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Enjambment
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Repetition
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“Bogland” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Prairies
- Slice
- Concedes to
- Encroaching
- Wooed
- Cyclops' eye
- Tarn
- Unfenced
- Bog
- Crusting
- Sights
- Great Irish Elk
- Peat
- Crate
- Definition
- Waterlogged
- Firs
- Camped on
- Atlantic seepage
- Bogholes
Prairies-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “We have no prairies”)
Wide expanses of open grassland.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Bogland”
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Form
"Bogland" consists of seven quatrains, or four-line stanzas. Its lines consistently range between five and ten syllables, but it never follows a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
Heaney was highly skilled with both metrical and free verse (though he tended to write more in the former). In this poem, the choice of freer lines seems to reflect the subject at hand. The Irish "Bogland" is slippery and shifting; it "crust[s]" over in the sun, making it relatively solid at times, but it hasn't had a rigid "definition" in "millions of years." Similarly, the poem is grouped into even stanzas and relatively even lines, but its rhythm remains slippery and inconsistent, and its sounds never conform to a rigid pattern.
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Meter
"Bogland" is a free verse poem, so it has no meter or rhyme scheme. The lines are of roughly even length, ranging from five syllables (e.g., line 1: "We have no prairies") to ten (line 27: "The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage"), but they never fall into a regular rhythm.
Heaney was a master of metrical as well as free verse, so his avoidance of meter here seems highly deliberate and suited to his subject. The poem is about slippery, unsteady ground, so its unsteady rhythm matches its imagery. At first glance, the lines look like they might follow a predictable pattern, but their sound shifts and varies as the bogland does.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Bogland" has no rhyme scheme. Because it's about wet, unstable ground, any kind of rigid scheme would be a poor match for its subject!
Two lines do end with the same word ("years" in lines 14 and 19), and a few line-ending words form imperfect rhymes (e.g., "under/"butter" in lines 13 and 16; "years"/"here" in lines 19 and 20). These sounds enrich Heaney's dense, often musical language, but they're subtle connections within a poem that's much too slippery to follow a strict pattern.
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“Bogland” Speaker
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The voice of the poem is a collective "We," which seems to be synonymous with "the Irish people." In other words, the speaker seems to speak for all of Ireland.
Over the course of the poem, they contrast "Our" open landscape with that of other countries—especially, perhaps, America. Unlike the European colonizers (and their descendants) who explored American "prairies," the "pioneers" of Ireland, according to the speaker, "keep striking / Inwards and downwards." In other words, they don't have any surface-level territory left to explore, so instead, they explore the interior of the land—including the historical artifacts buried in layers under its soil.
Overall, the speaker seems to view the Irish landscape with a mix of affection, wonder, and unease. The speaker is "astound[ed]," for example, by the prehistoric skeletons recovered from the bog, and they describe the "butter"-like consistency of the "ground" as "kind." At the same time, they sound unnerved by the seemingly "bottomless" nature of the land, whose "bogholes" can be treacherous for those who tread near them.
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“Bogland” Setting
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The poem's title announces its setting: "Bogland." Specifically, the poem describes the peat bogs (a.k.a. "peatland" or "bogland") of Seamus Heaney's native Ireland. Some 14 percent of the country is covered by such bogs (some of the "raised," some of the "blanket" variety), though this percentage is in flux due to climate change and human land use.
As the opening stanzas indicate, the bogs are "unfenced country"—open terrain—but they don't stretch all the way to a flat horizon, the way "prairies" typically do. Instead, they're surrounded by hills and mountains that make the horizon seem to "Encroach[]" on the viewer. The ground is mushy, marshy, and often slippery, like "black butter"; it "keeps crusting" in the warmth of the sun, but it lacks firm "definition" (and has for "millions of years"). Its peat has traditionally been dug for fuel throughout much of Ireland, but it's not solid enough to produce "coal"—a fossil fuel formed under heavy pressure in underground deposits.
At the same time, the cool bogland can act as an excellent preservative. As the poem notes, it's been the source of extraordinary archeological and paleontological finds, including the remains of prehistoric animals such as the "Great Irish Elk." (Also, the remains of ancient humans: a subject Heaney addressed in other poems.) It has yielded numerous discoveries of substances known as "bog butter": ancient dairy and meat products buried for preservation and subsequently lost or abandoned. (Some of this "butter" still smells like dairy, even after "More than a hundred years.") As more "layers" are "strip[ped]" from the land, such discoveries continue.
The closing lines note that the bogland is porous, with treacherous sinkholes ("bogholes") apparently caused by "seepage" from the "Atlantic" Ocean. In that sense, the land seems "bottomless," leading to the open ocean rather than the solid core of the earth.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Bogland”
Literary Context
Seamus Heaney grew up a farmer's son and became the most acclaimed Irish poet of his generation. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, with the Nobel committee citing his "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Like many of Heaney's poems, "Bogland" is inspired by the landscape of rural Ireland, including County Derry, Northern Ireland, where he was raised. It appeared as the closing poem in his second collection, Door into the Dark (1969), which also includes such acclaimed poems as "The Forge." Heaney dedicated the poem to his friend Terence Philip Flanagan, an Irish artist and teacher, who had previously dedicated his painting Boglands to the poet. On the writing process, Heaney commented:
From the moment I wrote it, I felt promise in "Bogland." Without having any clear notion of where it would lead or even whether I would go back to the subject, I realized that new co-ordinates had been established. Door jambs with an open sky behind them rather than the dark. I felt it in my muscles, nearly, when I was writing the poem…
This became one of numerous poems Heaney wrote about peat bogs, and about the skeletons and other ancient items recovered from them. A further selection is available here.
Heaney's early literary influences include the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), whose work also dealt with rural topics and the natural world, and the English romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821). In his Nobel Prize lecture, Heaney referred to Keats's "Ode to Autumn" as the "ark of the covenant between language and sensation." William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)—a previous Irish Nobel laureate—was another significant influence, about whom Heaney wrote the essays "Yeats as an Example?" (1978) and "A Tale of Two Islands: Reflections on the Irish Literary Revival" (1980).
Heaney is the best-known poet of the Northern School, a group of Northern Irish poets who began to garner attention in the 1960s, as political and cultural unrest escalated in their country. The 1960s were a period of tumultuous evolution in Irish politics and literature alike. In 1960, for example, Edna O'Brien published the novel The Country Girls, which portrayed Roman Catholicism as oppressive to women. The novel was banned, and O'Brien left Ireland. Writers and readers began to challenge this kind of government censorship more actively over the course of the decade.
Historical Context
Heaney was born in Northern Ireland in 1939. He grew up in an Ireland wracked by what would become known as "The Troubles" or the Northern Ireland conflict. The Troubles (c. 1968-1998) were a dispute between Protestant unionists, who wanted Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom, and Roman Catholic nationalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to join the Republic of Ireland. The struggle was often violent, and more than 3,600 people were killed and 30,000 wounded in these decades.
When "Bogland" was published in 1969, Heaney was living in Belfast. The previous year had seen the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a unionist paramilitary group, as well as a civil rights march in Derry. In August 1969, a three-day riot called the Battle of the Bogside took place in Derry, and the British Army deployed troops, escalating the violence.
Heaney himself was a Catholic and nationalist who chose to live in the south of Ireland. Some contemporaries criticized him for declining to take explicit sides in the Troubles, but his writing (including the books Wintering Out and North) does address the conflict. Meanwhile, many of his seemingly non-political poems, including "Bogland," reflect his profound awareness of Irish history and identity.
As the poem indicates, the peat bogs of Ireland have been a rich source of discoveries for paleontologists and archeologists. For example, the prehistoric animal mentioned in lines 9-12 once ranged over much of Europe and Asia, but it was named the "Irish Elk" because so many well-preserved skeletons have been found in Irish bogland.
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More “Bogland” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Heaney read "Bogland" in a 2003 studio recording.
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Heaney Remembered — Watch the Irish national news service's tribute to Heaney following his death in 2013.
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An Interview with the Poet — Watch a 1980 interview with Seamus Heaney, covering his rural Irish roots and approach to poetry.
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The Poet's Life and Work — Learn more about the poet in his biography from the Poetry Foundation.
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Heaney, Nobel Laureate — Check out the Nobelprize.org exhibit on Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Seamus Heaney
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