Seamus Heaney wrote poems on a wide variety of subjects; from reflecting on his experiences with nature as a child to a period of political unrest that plagued Ireland in the early 20th century called the "Troubles". Some of his poems address many issues at once and have recurring themes and ideas. One example is a series of poems called the Bog poems: "Bogland", "Tollund man" and "The Grauballe man", which share an obvious geographical theme but also show a similar concern with themes such as violence, religion and terror. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The first poem Bogland is a poem that looks at Bogs more from a nationalistic point of view. Peat bogs are wetlands that accumulate peat, a deposit of dead plant material. Peat bogs are a topographic feature of Ireland and are a common occurrence in countries that are part of the Northern Hemisphere. The speaker of the poem opens the first stanza with the word "We," which is a possessive pronoun and conveys a sense of unity with the earth. In the first lines there is a contrast between the physical geography of the United States with the Irish landscape, “We have no prairies/To cut off a great evening sun,” and what appears on the surface to be a negative statement turns into a positive statement . with words like “boundless horizon” and “unfenced country”. At the same time, the poem sheds light on the unrealized features of the swamps, the layer upon layer of the land, held in a rich history and a "swamp that continues to cake" far and beyond. Furthermore, the peat bogs are layered and each layer is a page from a history book, but like an invading sun it initially reveals nothing, thus giving a feeling of absence. Peat bogs are also used as a metaphor to show a connection of the present to the past through the constancy of the land, evident from the line “The butter sunk beneath/ Over a hundred years” which “Was recovered salty and white”. The conservative nature of peat bogs is also discussed in “The Tollund Man” where Seamus Heaney takes it a step further by calling the land a “goddess”. The Tollund Man is a poem full of promising things, first there is the promising pilgrimage: “One day I will go to Aarhus.” In this very first line the tone is stubborn and expectant, however, there is a presence of detachment towards the future from the moment the speaker is eager to see the "peat brown head" of the sacred body, but assumes an impersonal tone when one notices the physical characteristics of the Tollund man's body Afterwards, however, he feels a personal connection with the Tollund man when he says "I will stay a long time." only after exposing his vulnerability to religious victimization. He then glorifies it again, and this time to saintly status. But as he does so he uses a more threatening and forceful tone, personifies the swamp into a deity and equates it with Ireland, feminine in nature and overwhelming "she tightened his collar". The type of language used indicates the helplessness of the Tollund man in the face of superior and supernatural forces, but then insists on the quasi-divine nature coming into force and "works/ Him to the guarded body of a saint", perhaps a surrogate of Christ, who for now is left to chance “the treasure of the lawnmowers” ​​and will be resurrected again “his stained face/ Rest.” There is a deliberate attempt to link religion with the cycle of violence in order to bring peace. This attempt becomes clearer in the second stanza where the speaker's tone becomes more emphatic as he breaks the stillness of the last line of the first stanza to bravely confront the violence caused by religion. His boldness is exemplified by what he says”.