How do the poets write about c
The death of a child has a great power to move us. In this essay I will be discussing how the poets write about childhood death in 'On my first Sonne' and 'Mid-term break. It would be a far more common event in the 17th Century, when these poems were written, as childhood illness was often fatal.On my First Sonne is written by Ben Jonson. It is an elegy in which the poet expresses his sorrow for the death of his first son. Jonson contrasts his feelings of sorrow with what he thinks he should feel; happiness that his son is in a better place. Shamus Heaney records a similar experience in 'Mid-term break'. The poem is about the death of Heaney's infant brother and how people, including him, reacted to this. The poem's title suggests a holiday but this "break" does not happen for pleasant reasons. For most of the poem Heaney writes of people's unnatural reactions, but at the end he is able to grieve honestly.The reader of 'On my first Sonne' is aware of Jonson's Christian faith .He is certain that his son is in a "state" we should envy, in God's keeping. Heaney's poem does not discuss religion so prominently; however there are discripions which indicate a Catholic funeral. Both Jonson and Heaney write in the first person an
The father, apparently always strong at other funerals, is distraught by his child's death, while the mother is too angry to cry and instead she "coughed out angry tearless sighs". When late at night the child's body is returned Heaney refers to this as "the corpse". In conclusion the 'On my first Sonne' and 'Mid-term break' explore different aspects of childhood death. "Big Jim", apparently a family friend, makes a regrettable pun in which he refers to a metaphorical "blow" as apposed to the "blow" which killed the boy. Jonson tries to argue that it is only fair that his son is returned at God's bidding and that his arrogant plans for the boy's future were the cause of his present sense of loss. In the last two stanzas Heaney portrays a calm mood, "Snowdrops/And candles soothed the bedside", literally they soothed Heaney. He sees the boy's life also in terms of a loan from God, which he has had to repay, after seven years, on "the just day". In this stanza he uses personal pronouns such as "him", "his" and "he", as opposed to the insensitive term, "the corpse". This contrasts greatly with the embarrassing scenes earlier in the poem. However the final two stanzas in which Heaney is alone with his brother where he can be natural. In 'On my first Sonne' is more about Jonson tying to find a meaning for his loss than mourning his son's death. The poet sees the boy's death as caused by his, not his son's sin, in loving the child too much, an idea that returns at the end of the poem. He concludes by vowing that from now on he will be more careful with those he loves; he will be wary of liking and so needing them too much. He calls him the child of his "right hand" both to suggest the boy's great worth and also the fact that he would have been the writer's heir.
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Acceptance Essays
