Seamus Heaney | "Hope and history rhyme"

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) Nobel Prize in Poetry 1995

Nobel Prize Lecture "Crediting Poetry"

Seamus Heaney from The Cure at Troy [excerpt] A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

Valediction to the students of English 4:

I will remember the class of 2016 for enthusiasm, humor, courtesy, forbearance, and talent. Recall the words of Seamus Heaney as you leave St. John’s and begin your life’s work:

History says, don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

Work for justice as you make “hope and history rhyme.”

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Blessings,

Ms. Muhilly

May 2016