Guide to spelling, punctuation and grammar

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. 
Paragraph 2
The first line of the poem immediately establishes
who the poem is about. We are presented with an
image of the ‘girl’ through the poet’s imagination:
she is ‘among horses and wide fields’ and is keen on
horse-riding. The man she will possibly marry is
evocatively described as having a ‘stubbled chin’
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and a ‘slow gentle smile’. Then there is a shift to a
time after her fiancé has died. The poet sits with her
in a bar discussing her ‘story’. Her dreams of
happiness with her potential husband have been
destroyed and she is questioning whether she can
really envisage finding happiness again with the
decent but much older local farmer who wants to
marry her. 
Paragraph 3
The second verse of the poem records a moment when
the poet, travelling with the potential new husband,
stops at a field of barley into which the farmer walks
to stare at the horizon. His silent, uncommunicative
gaze, suggests a man of few words, a simple
countryman who may not be sure that he is doing
the right thing in marrying the girl. He knows that
the poet knows her. Is he groping for some
indication from the poet about what he should do?
Probably not! The third verse brings the poem back
to the relationship between the poet and the woman.
It describes a game of tennis and subtly suggests the
possibility of love between them. The fourth and final
verse consists of the poet reflecting on what the
woman might be doing now. It ends on an almost
wistful note, suggesting loss and waste.