By: Eavan Boland
Slideshow and analysis: Willow
Fantino and Ryleigh Cameron
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Purple=“w” words
Blue=negative words
Red=directional words
Pink=love words and relationship words
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Quarantine: n. a strict isolation imposed to stop the spread of
disease. (Title)
Threshold: n. the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient
intensity to begin to produce an effect (line 13)
Inventory: v. to summarize (line 16)
Workhouse: a place set up in the 1830’s in Ireland for people that
could no longer afford to live could go and live because no one
would take them in and they had no where else to go. Quickly
these filled up and people had to travel from town to town in
search of one. (line 3)
Famine Fever: cholera, dysentery, scurvy, typhus, and infestations
of lice caused by the rotten potatoes the people were eating in
1847. (line 5)
Winter of 1847: historical reference to the famine in Ireland during
1847 that devastated many people and the government refused to
do anything although aware of the situation. (line 17)
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In the worst hour of the worst season
Of the worst year of a whole people
A man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking –they were both walking- north.
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She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
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In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.
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Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:
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Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.
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Context: one of her later poems
Speaker: viewer of these two people
Situation: A man and woman in love and
living in poverty die
Subject: love
Audience: whoever will read this
Structure: 5 stanzas with 4 lines and the 2nd line
indented
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Structure: the 2nd lines put together
Light in Dark
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Light shows up better in the darkest places
True love shows up the best in the worst of times
Ireland and it’s population
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Man is Ireland and woman is population
 man gives woman all he has but in the spring they’re
both dead
 Thousands dead in Irish famine
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Toxins of a whole history
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Potato famine due to toxins
Ignorance of gov’t killed the people
4th stanza
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Love isn’t easy
Most love stories are tragic
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Directions: London group of businessmen collected
money and bought maize to send to western Ireland
(along with clothes and other supplies)
‘W’ words: emphasizes the worst and west
Negative words: accents the severity of the situation
Love/Relationship words: stresses the love tone
throughout the poem and the relationship of these two
people