through images and sounds
the character of an old woman, presumably a neighbor, who used to come to his well each morning to fill her water bucket.
The descriptions in
the first eight lines are ones of old age and decrepitude, foreshadowing
the woman's death: she is ""like an old bat staggering
up the field,""
the pump's sound is a ""whooping cough,""
the woman wears a ""gray apron."" In
the last six lines, she has vanished from
the poem physically, but while in life she depended on
the favors of
the speaker, in death she has become
the ""Giver,"" providing
the poet with inspiration and perhaps representing to him
the maturing process of poetry itself-the aging of his muse. Filled with careful rhythms and intricately patterned sonic elements,
the poem is a good example of
the sonnet in contemporary poetry-a form Heaney explores extensively in Field Work."
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