Patrick Kavanagh

Advent is a sort of mini-Lent, a time of fasting before the feasting of Christmas. Thus we have the "dry black bread" and the "sugarless tea", symbols of the self denial that can make us spiritually fit for Christmas. And there is a reward - the recovery of innocence and freshness.
The need for repentance is clear: "We have tested and tasted too much". There is a sense that the poet has become satiated with experience, like a person who feels uncomfortably bloated after too much food or fizzy drink, and so needs to cut back. But Kavanagh is concerned more with inner well-being: "penance will charm back the luxury of a child's soul". And then there will be a change of perspective, once again he will be able to see things as he did when he was a child, he will rediscover "the newness that was in a every stale thing", for example "the spirit-shocking/ Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill".
Towards the end of the poem Kavanagh opts for an experiential approach to religion, rather than one that is too analytical. He wants to experience God and His creation with the heart rather than the head: "we shall not ask for reason's payment … Nor analyse God's breath in common statement".
He might seem to have a thing against knowledge, but he seems to be reacting against his own over indulgence, negative experiences, knowledge of sin: "The knowledge we stole but could not use". It's not too much of a jump to see a link with the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Now the "wages" of sin are to be "thrown into the dust-bin" so that Kavanagh can move spiritually refreshed into Christmas and the new year: "Christ comes with a January flower".

Further Activities

Click here for a detailed treatment of the religious themes.

Assignment: How well does Kavanagh balance the themes of innocence and renewal?

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"Wallow" from line 3 just about sums up this poem. Kavanagh wants to wallow in the beauty of nature in this his favourite spot - by the banks of the Grand Canal near Baggot Street in Dublin.
One might call this a water based poem - there is the real water of the canal, but water is also used as a powerful symbol. He speaks of "pouring redemption", of praying with the ease of flowing water: "To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech". This reminds us of his desire to avoid the "conscious hour" in Advent (see above), and as in that poem there is a felt need for change: "this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress". What he wants to do is "The will of God" (like the bird in line 5), and he reckons he can acieve that by enjoying the ordinary things in life: "wallow in the habitual, the banal", again reminding us of Advent: "Wherever life pours ordinary plenty". Which brings us back to water!
Again he wants to enjoy creation by experiencing ("the gaping need of my senses") rather than analysing ("arguments that cannot be proven").

This poem will ring a bell with anyone who has happy memories of Christmas childhoods. The religious aspect of Christmas doesn't get short changed here: there are the "Mass-going feet", the "Three Wise Kings" brought to mind by three "whin bushes" on the horizon, the cow-house reminding the poet of the stable of Bethlehem: "The light of her stable-lamp was a star/And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle". And in the imagination of the child "The light between the ricks of hay and straw/Was a hole in heaven's gable".
Such use of light, common in religious poetry, also figures strongly elsewhere in the poem - the "stars in the morning east", "the winking glitter of a frosty dawn". Music mightn't have figured strongly in the original Christmas story (apart from the angels singing), but it is prominent here - from the actual music of his father who "played the melodion", to the metaphorical "music of milking" and the sounds from the paling-post: "the music that came out was magical".
But it's not just a poem of happy memories - some deeper philosophical issues are touched on. As in Advent (see above) there is a sense of the sin that has taken the poet away from childhood innocence, and again thee is that link with knowledge and the Garden of Eden: ""O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me/To eat the knowledge that grew in clay/And death the germ within it". He can recover innocence in a way by memory ("Now and then/I can remember something of the gay/Garden that was childhood's") and as in Advent the poem ends with a flower image suggesting innocence: "And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned/On the Virgin Mary's blouse".

Further Activities

Click here for a discussion of Kavanagh's Christmas poems.

Assignment: Discuss the power of "faith memories" in this poem.

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