Summary
The next well that the speaker describes is shallow and full of life, like an aquarium. He remembers pulling plant roots out of it and seeing his own pale face reflected in its surface. Still other wells, he says, produced echoes, so that the speaker heard his own voice in a new and different way. One well even frightened him, because he watched a rat run out of its surrounding vegetation. The speaker then skips ahead into the future, writing from the perspective of his adult self. He says that it would now be considered unacceptable for him to get down in the dirt or stare into wells like the mythological figure Narcissus. Instead, he uses rhyme to recreate the echoes and reflections that fascinated him as a child.
Analysis
In this latter half of the poem, we shift focus, zooming in on two aspects of wells: reflection and echoing. Heaney draws our attention to the similarities between these two effects. Both echoes and reflections involve an object or space subsuming, and then returning, part of the world around them. The speaker is fascinated by this process of exchange, and equally fascinated by the way his voice and likeness are returned to him recognizable but altered. He seems to see his own reflection as a kind of alien body, "a white face" that surprises him when he pulls aside the plants covering a well. Similarly, when he hears the echo of his own voice, it's no longer quite the same—it has "a clean new music." Wells allow him to see himself, but not in a way he's accustomed to, and not in a way that induces vanity or self-consciousness. Instead, they let him see himself afresh, the same way he sees the other parts of the well.
However, he suggests, this isn't clear to the rest of the world. While they might be nonjudgmental of a child's curiosity (or while a child might not care about judgment), they would be bewildered if the adult speaker showed the same single-minded interest. This is partially related to the indignity and dirtiness of his childhood hobby—he no longer dares "to pry into roots, to finger slime." In that sense, the speaker is worried that people will condemn his exploration of the outside world. But he's also worried that they'll condemn his self-examination, believing it to be frivolous and narcissistic: he even references the mythological character Narcissus, known for staring at his own reflection in water. Of course, this judgment would be unfair. We already know that the speaker likes to hear the echo of his voice and to see his reflection, not out of vanity, but out of a desire to encounter himself anew as part of the natural world. In other words, his hobby isn't egotistical, but rather a route to the dissolution of ego and self-consciousness.
In the poem's final lines, the speaker reveals his solution to this conflict. Rather than stare into wells, he writes poetry. He specifically highlights one aspect of poetry: rhyme. This is no accident. In a rhyme, a single sound is repeated more than once. But, each time, it is somewhat altered, such that it illuminates the similarities between words and highlights linguistic patterns. It's therefore a perfect substitute for echoes and reflections, which also take images and sounds from the world and repeat them in altered form. Moreover, a poem might be considered a kind of reflection of the poet, depicting its writer in a slanted way. The speaker, through poetry, is able to view himself and view patterns in language, the way wells once allowed him to view himself and to view patterns in nature. One way to view this poem is through the lens of two of its metaphors, both drawn from Greek myth: the Helicon, representing poetic inspiration, and Narcissus, representing frivolity and vanity. By the final line, it is clear that the Helicon is a far more suitable metaphor for describing the speaker's relationship to both poetry and wells.
