It deals with a visit the poet makes to a dying friend or relative in hospital and the thoughts and feelings that he has while there.

The poem opens with a powerful sensory image: “The hospital smell”. Smell is a potent sense and the reference to the antiseptic and polish atmosphere of the hospital, immediately connects the reader with the experience. The second line conveys the pungency of the odour in the image: “combs my nostrils”. The smell is so strong and unpleasant that it physically invades his nose, reaching to the roots of his nostril hairs. He

seems, in fact, to have become ‘all nose’, and he describes his nostrils “bobbing” along the corridors. The decoration of the building with its “green and yellow” paint seems to add to the sense of his discomfort, since these are colours often associated with illness.

The second verse describes a brief glimpse of a patient being “trundled” on a bed or trolley through the hospital. “seems a corpse”. When the bed or trolley is taken into a lift, he imagines that it “vanishes/heavenward” like a soul after death. The third verse describes his agitati

emotion, and imagines himself growing “fainter, not smaller” as he moves out of the

giving”. Nevertheless, the image is unsettling and arouses a mixture of horror and pity.

“A withered hand/ trembles on its stalk”. “Withered” suggests weakness, wasting, while

The poem “Visiting Hour” by Norman MacCaig is one whose final lines have a powerful

enjambement of “eyelids too heavy/to raise”. The image which describes the drip fixed in

Some topics in this essay:
Norman MacCaig, , “visiting hour”, Hour” Norman, “visiting hour” norman, hour” norman, norman maccaig, verse describes, final lines, bed trolley, hour” norman maccaig,