Louis MacNeice: Carrickfergus

                The setting of this poem is introduced with the title, that is if you know where or what Carrickfergus even is. A lot of poetry in the English language is from England or the United States, so to get a poem from Ireland really makes Carrickfergus exceptional. MacNeice includes historically important facts throughout the poem, mentioning the soldiers as well as the conflict between the catholic and protestant church. This poem is about a wealthy individual in Ireland who still sees the lives of many others in his city. There is plenty of autobiographical information in this poem, and what is strange about this poem is the way that he doesn’t downplay the role of the working class at all. in fact he describes his educated status as a puppet world of sons. For such an autobiographical poem its interesting that he uses a quatrain meter, and even more interesting is the rhyme scheme in which he rhymes the last word of lines B and D but not the others.