Terminus

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form & Meter

“Terminus” has three distinctive stanzas (groups of lines). All three stanzas are broken sets of two lines or couplets. This poem also has hallmarks of alliterative verse. Alliterative verse uses repeated sounds to unify lines of poetry instead of end rhymes. This type of verse is more common in Old and Middle English. However, “Terminus” does not have the break in the middle of each line, a requirement for strict alliterative verse. Heaney instead uses the couplets to break up his lines, so his alliterative verse is looser.

“Terminus” applies both internal rhymes and end rhymes. Internal rhymes—rhyming words not at the end of a poetic line—are more common in Irish-language poetry. Some examples here include “hoked” and “spoke” (Lines 1, 9), and “acorn” and “dormant” (Lines 2, 4). End rhymes are at the end of a line and usually form a pattern with other rhymes in the same stanza. The end rhymes in “Terminus” are either used for repetition of an important point, such as second thoughts: “thought” and “thoughts” (Lines 7-8), or to connect disparate ideas: “nativity” and “iniquity” (Lines 10-11).

These couplets are end-stopped or ended with a period. The only couplet that flows over into the next is the second to the last: “When I stood on the central stepping-stone / I was the last earl on horseback in midstream” (Lines 20-21). Heaney removes the border that a period creates between the other couplets because this is the point in the poem where he crosses onto the stepping-stone. This stone is the ultimate liminal space in “Terminus.” It is where Heaney travels between past and present, history and legacy, and each part of his identity.

Alliteration

“Terminus” uses alliteration to connect stanza and lines. Alliteration is the repetition of the initial sound in a word throughout a line or lines of verse. One example of Heaney connecting stanzas with alliteration includes: “lifted” and “listened” (Lines 3, 5). These words are associated with senses and how the speaker interacts with his surroundings.

In the second stanza, “s” forms an alliterative chain from one childhood story to another: “spoke,” “squirrel,” “shone,” “coins in,” and “stove-lids” (Lines 9-12). Heaney does this to connect the two stories that his family “spoke” of in each couplet.

Assonance is another form of alliteration used in this poem. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within a line or lines of verse. Heaney applies assonance in the same way: to connect ideas on different lines of stanzas. For example: “two” and “grew” (Lines 15-16) are used in the third stanza to balance out the sounds in each line.

“Between” (Line 16) corresponds with these lines through consonance. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds. The sound of the “w” that creates the vowel sounds in “two” and “grew” (Lines 15-16) makes a similar sound in the middle of “between” (Line 16), which here represents growing up in between two sides.

Consonance is the primary type of alliteration employed in “Terminus.” Because the connecting consonant sounds run into different words in the poem, the repeated consonants do not have borders as strict as formal alliteration.

Adverbial and Conditional Clauses

The first three couplets in the first stanza are conditional clauses. Heaney uses the second conditional to denote a time and space referred to now that can also apply to the past and the future. By applying conditional clauses in the first stanza, Heaney opens the poem with an uneasy sense that culminates in the question about having “second thoughts” (Line 8) at the end of the last couplet of this stanza.

The two couplets in the second stanza are adverbial clauses of time. “When” (Line 9) denotes what happened to the speaker once they heard a specific type of didactic story. The speaker formed an opinion as a consequence of each story he heard from his relatives. This cause and effect of the two different stories, told at different times, creates tension in the second stanza. This tension culminates in Heaney “suffering the limit” (Line 14) of each.

When the speaker finds balance in the third stanza, the sentence structure is simpler. The adverbial clause of time comes back in the final two couplets of this stanza to mark the liminal space, the stasis at the poem’s end.