Scaffolding

“Scaffolding” is divided into a series of five couplets, or five groupings of two lines sharing the same rhyme and rhythm. Each couplet is its own stanza, or poetic paragraph. The rhyming of the couplets is known as masculine rhyme, as the final stressed syllables of each line rhyme with one another. For example, the couplets end with “building” and “scaffolding” in the first and second lines. The next couplet rhymes “points” and “joints” (Lines 3-4). The overall rhyme scheme of the entire poem can therefore be represented as follows: aa bb cc dd ee. The pattern of these paired rhyming couplets helps to create a visual representation of the scaffolding on which Heaney centers the poem. Just as scaffolding is used to construct physical and metaphorical walls in the poem, the scaffolded couplets build upon one another to create the complete poem.

The second, third, and fourth stanzas of the poem all share the same meter: iambic pentameter. An iamb is a unit of poetry, a poetic foot, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.