collected terms and titles from the Natural History Museum

hornblende
alluvial soil
glacial till
stratified sands and clays
quartz
feldspar
calcite
gneiss
three-toothed cinqufoil
rock-tripe
limestone
shale
calcerous bog
glatiation
the water cycle
marl sedge (composed chiefly of shells)
the shale rocks of the Hudson River Series often develop a slaty cleavage… and fertility of the derived soils is variable, though decidedly on the poor side.
quartzite
wintergreen
checkerberry
teaberry
mountaintea
the mountain laurel is a frequent companion
Relation of Plants to Geology and Soil
barley oats timothy rye wheat alfalfa
Friends and Enemies of the Orchard
Fertilization of the Apple
Life in the Soil
Cycles of Nutrition and Decay
Structure of a Bean Plant
From Field to Lake
Life in Early June
Scavengers
Food Substances Removed from the Water
Microscopic Animals
Christmas Fern
Ground Pine
Black Birch
Redstart on Beech Tree
Wild Cherry
Striped Maple
Oven Bird
Heart-Leaved Aster

Flowers again appear in the woodland, mostly asters and goldenrods. These have formed their flower buds during the summer, and do not ordinarily carry them through the winter.

Winter buds of Dogwood
Plant Succession on Limestone
Progressive Changes after Fire, cattle grazing, and forest cutting
Indigo bird and nest
Fireweed
Fire Cherry
Aspen
Field Sparrow and Nest
Smooth Sumac
Blueberry
Plant Succession on Shale

from 'The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of Whisper' by Elmer Andrews; Lecturer in Extra-Mural Department, University of Ulster

draws on the battering vitality of the Anglo-Saxon alliterative tradition to give utterance to an imagination informed by the austerity of cold, plastering rains and sharp-toothed winds. It is a landscape which the Anglo-Saxon Wanderer or Seafarer would recognize. 152

clamor and clogging 159

tribulation is purifying. In hard times it is necessary to become hard too-- even traitorous. 160

sacral, archetypal and mythic resonances of experience. Heaney submits all to the dark. 160

morning field smells
read poems as prayers
'a marvelous lightship that will surface from muddied waters'
elver-gleams in the dark
hide-bound boundary tree 173

"S's only consort now, are the birds of the air...."
The First Flight
gannet's strike
camaraderie of rookeries
discovering his new zone of being through the various birds he encounters.

oisin and st. patrick vs. holly tree (ink)
lobe and larynx of the mossy places
the old dry glut
living like a rook in the air 180
unroofed tower....
rest balm wingflap
unpainted spaces

An Artists' sensuous delight in his wife is complicated by his awareness that he has chosen to reject her. He imagines his wife's eyelids/glister and burgeon
the fleshed hyacinth

what it is like to gather holly in the rain
'gleamed like bottle glass'
'a black-letter bush, a glittering shield-wall, cutting as holly and ice'