The title poem from this collection by Seamus Heaney is set on an island that has been a site of pilgrimage in Ireland for over a thousand years.
A narrative sequence, it is an autobiographical quest concerned with ‘the growth of a poet’s mind’. The long poem is preceded by a section of shorter lyrics and leads into a third group of poems in which the poet’s voice is at one with the voice of the legendary mad King Sweeney.