In ‘Baby Sitting’, Gillian Clarke writes about how she is baby sitting another child and how she recognises that this baby is not her own, and it feels strange because she does not love this child. The anxiety because of this that she feels, is channelled into a sympathy for this child because it is too young to know what is going on. Most of the statements in this poem are simple and straightforward, showing Clarke’s detachment from the baby she is looking after. They are simple sentences that reflect her opinion: ‘I don’t love this baby’. Clarke says that she is ‘sitting in a strange room listening for the wrong baby’. She is implying here that she should be listening for her own child, not this baby that she is looking after and her actual child should be getting her attention at the moment. Clarke identifies the reasons that this baby can be loved: ‘she is a perfectly acceptable child’ and Clarke suggests that if the baby were to awake, it would hate her because it could sense that Clarke is not its real mother.
In ‘On My First Sonne’, by Ben Jonson, a relationship is expressed between the deceased child’s father and the deceased boy. The poem is simple, and illustrates the love that Ben Jonson feels for his son, and the grief he bears as the result of his son’s death. Jonson feels that he sinned: ‘my sinne was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy’. He believes that his sin was wanting too much for his son, and his punishment was to have his son taken away from him. Lines 3 and 4 are about the ‘lending of his son from God’. Jonson believes that his son has been ‘lent’ by God and agreed to God, and he will be returned on the ‘just day’, meaning the death of his son.
In ‘The Affliction of Margaret’, William Wordsworth writes about the frustration a mother bears because she does not know where her son is. Margaret does not know where her son his, and the mystery is never solved as we never hear of the fate of her son. The repetition of the phrase: ‘where art thou’ in the first two lines shows that she is constantly thinking of her son, whilst throughout the rest of the poem, Margaret imagines where her son might be and what has happened to him. The second verse tells the reader that her son has been gone for seven years and her feelings: ‘despaired, believed, beguiled’ all highlight how she thought he would return and how she is ‘beguiled’ or ‘confused’ as we know it. Margaret realises that her son may not want to come home because he is poor she says ‘worldly granduer’ – and that wealth does not matter. Before he left, she wanted her son to make his fortune, but with the recent events she has realised that this is not important.
Out of the four poems, I would have to say that I find ‘Follower’ the most interesting. I find Heaney an interesting poet and generally I prefer all of his poems more to that of the other poets, in that they seem to make more sense, and they are more interesting and in a kind of way, humorous. I like Follower because it highlights the way that any son wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, it is a natural thing as I am sure all sons see their fathers as being a superior and supreme figure to that of themselves and any other ‘dad’ in the world: I know that this is the case in the past relationship with my father. I also like the way that Heaney portrays the way that the boy is ‘feeble’ and ‘clumsy’ whilst the father is seen as ‘masterful’ and ‘strong’, as only he is strong enough to operate the horse plough!
All of the poems show a relationship between members of different generations.
Seamus Heaney, in ‘Follower’ writes about how he used to follow in his fathers footsteps, literally, when his father used to work on the horse plough and also metaphorically: he wants to follow in his fathers footsteps. Heaney illustrates the difference between the son and father in that the father is seen as masterful, and the child is portrayed as clumsy. In ‘Baby-Sitting’, Clarke writes about the events when she baby sat a young child and the difference and anxiety she felt because she knew that the child was not hers. In ‘On My First Sonne’, Jonson writes about the loss of his son and the feelings for him after his death and how he writes the poem as thought his son can actually hear him. This ironic because he cannot; and finally in ‘The Affliction of Margaret’, Wordsworth writes about the frustration felt by a lady called Margaret who does not know where her son is and hasn’t seen him for a long time.