1.  Yeats, Boland, and Heaney are all Irish poets.  In what ways are their voices similar?  What differences do you note in the emotions and thoughts they express?

2.  Yeats contrasts the image of a lake isle with “Irish poets ,” presumably of a city.  Boland contrasts the image of her grandmother leaving “a courtroom in tears” (l. 18) with that of a “nation rising to the light,” presumably the Irish Republic that would achieve independence from England in 1922.  Heaney contrasts the image of his grandfather’s spade with the pen that a poet “digs” with.  Write about how these images serve as metaphors of the feelings and themes that one or another of these poets seem to reflect on.