 before love. He conjures up the excitement and anticipation of liking someone in two simple phrases: ‘the half-talk code of mysteries’ and ‘the wink-and-elbow language of delight’. The language of love is not always – perhaps not even mostly – verbal, and Kavanagh succinctly conveys this here. This language is only half-spoken and it relies on body language, such as a cheeky wink or a surreptitious (furtive; secretive) nudge, to get its message across. The fun of romantic love is often forgotten by poets, but Kavanagh playfully explores the ‘enchanted way’ of love in ‘On Raglan Road’. Yet, he also shows how careless we can be with our hearts and romantic love is presented as being as dangerous as it is enticing: ‘we tripped lightly along the ledge/ Of the deep ravin e where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge’. He ruefully concedes that his single-minded pursuit of love did not always bring him happiness: ‘O I loved too much and by such, by such, is happiness thrown away.’


‘Shancoduff’ also explores the painful side of love, but here it is the pain of loving something, rather than someone. The speaker is hurt by the careless words of the cattle-drovers: ‘ “Who owns them hungry hills ... A poet? Then by heavens he must be poor. ”’ The speaker feels deeply hurt by this: ‘I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?’   stanza of ‘A Christmas Childhood’, a celebration of family love: ‘My father played the melodion,/ My mother milked the cows,/ And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned/ On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.’


Kavanagh’s ability to celebrate the ordinary, everyday love that ‘pours ordinary plenty’ (‘Advent’) is most apparent in his love letter to the Rialto Hospital: ‘A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward/ Of a chest hospital’. Like the ‘hungry hills’ of Shancoduff, it is not pretty to look at, but the aspect of love Kavanagh is exploring here is its ‘This is what love does to things’. He celebrates the fact that love makes the Rialto Bridge and the main hospital gate that was bent by a heavy lorry, beautiful to him, and believes that it is the duty of a lover to be honest and forthright about love – ‘Naming these things is the love-act and its pledge’ and to explore love ‘without claptrap’, as Kavanagh certainly does at this point in his life.


Rialto Bridge LEAVING CERTIFICATE HIGHER LEVEL 303


Patrick Kavanagh


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