Compare parents in "On My First Sonne" and "The Affliction of Margaret" with two other poems by Heaney and Clarke.

In “Catrin”, this time we see a mother in conflict with her daughter. In the first stanza, the poet is writing from memory and the repetition of ‘I can remember you’ suggest that it is a very strong memory. The poet was already at a ‘fierce confrontation’ with her daughter even before she was born, which is a presetting for their conflict later on. ‘Tight red rope’, ‘wild’ and ‘shouted’ creates a striking image of conflict and chaos, although through ‘tender’, we can also see the affection of the mother for her daughter. The ‘tight red rope’ is a metaphor for the umbilical cord which ties mother and daughter together. This metaphor is repeated in the second stanza as ‘that old rope’, suggesting that although they are separated physically after birth, there is still an invisible bond that ties them together. The clear gap between the two stanzas shows this separation, and it also indicates the past from the present. Although they are at conflict with each other, the mother is torn between love and hostility. She conveys love in the same way as the mother in “The Affliction of Margaret” – through worry, as her daughter asks to skate in the dark for one more hour.

Similarly, the father in “Follower” also shares a complicated relationship with his son, although not necessarily conflict. At the start of the poem, ‘his shoulders globed like a full sail strung’ and ‘an expert’ shows the Heaney’s clear respect and admiration of his father, which caused him to follow his father both literally and metaphorically. Heaney uses technical terms such as ‘wing’, ‘sock’ and ‘head rig’, which suggested that he did, or wanted to, follow his father in terms of family tradition. However, now his father is the one ‘who keeps stumbling behind’ him, being the ‘nuisance’ that he once was. Through the tone of the last stanza of the poem, it suggests vaguely that Heaney feels some resentment and a little pity for his father, and also some guilt at not being able to live up to his father’s example. This is perhaps similar to what the mother speculates in “The Affliction of Margaret” about the thoughts of her son. Effectively, their roles are now reversed.

One thing that is common with “The Affliction of Margaret” and “Follower” is the formality of the tone of which the parent writes about their child. This can be shown through the way which the poems are similarly structured: both poems have a set number of lines within each stanza, and each line mostly ends with punctuation. When structure this way, the poem gives off a very rigid and organised feel, which in turn sounds formal. “On My First Sonne” and “Catrin”, however, is similar to the previous two in terms of the overall tone of the poem, but different in structure. “On My First Sonne” is written like an inscription on a tombstone, shown by ‘here doth lye’. “Catrin” is different because its irregular line endings and stanzas is also a symbol of conflict between parent and child, which the other three poems’ structure does not symbolise.          

However different the parents in all four poems may be, they all love their children, and are saddened when the children no longer has dependency on the parents.