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Opening paragraph
‘History’ has an almost elegiac tone as the poet
remembers ‘the tall girl from Kildare’ and tells the
story obliquely of the loss of her young fiancé in a
car accident and the dilemma she now faces of
whether to put his memory behind her and marry
another, older man who is offering himself; the
alternative would be to live alone, tending her
garden with no companion for life. There are
various time-shifts in the poem: the time before the
poet meets her, the time when they were close and
the present when he wonders about what she is doing
now. There is a sense of a lost love, a regret and a
sadness which are expressed by the poet in language
that is concentrated and resonant.