In Line 15, the subject of the poem refers to his brother as “the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.” To illustrate that the brother has past away and the body is just a shell, not the actual brother.
Personification is the main technique used in the 6th stanza “Snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside”. The snowdrops and candles probably make the room appear calmer and softer rather than having harsh, bright colours.
“A poppy bruise on his left temple,” is written because a poppy is a symbol of remembrance. We wear poppies on Remembrance Day to remember the people who have died. The brother will never forget his brother. Also, the bright red against the 4 year old’s pale skin will force quite a contrast.
It is only on the penultimate line “No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.” That we are finally told how the death occurred. Before this, all the poem is about is the boy’s reaction to coming home not really the death itself. Now the reader knows that the brother was hit by a car because it says” the bumper knocked him clear” and cars have bumpers.
“A four foot box, a foot for every year.” is the last line and is totally separate to the rest of the poem. It is a rhyming couplet with the penultimate line but the poet wants the last line to have a big impact on you. It is disjointed from the poem so it is magnified in your brain.
“On My first Sonne” is written as if the reader is the son. The first line says “Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;” suggests his son is to him like Jesus is to God and that he is very proud of him. “My sinne was too much hope for thee, lov’d boy,” is said because in 1616, when this poem was written, you shouldn’t love anybody more than you loved God. God was your number 1 priority, not your family as Ben Jonson has written and he feels that was the reason his son was taken from him. The subject of the poem refers to his son being “lent” to him which implies he was never really his. God is the controller of the Earth and its people so he can easily change things suddenly. With the loss of his son, Ben Jonson has lost his role as a father, but he says “O, could I loose all father, now.” The “all” refers to him losing God as well. He has now lost his role as a father and has lost his own “father” too. “To have so soone scap’d worlds, and flesh rage and, if no other miserie, yet age?” means his son has missed out on all of the misery of becoming old.
“Ben. Jonson his best piece of poetrie.” Jonson was very proud of his son and refers him to a poem because he creates poems so this line means that his son is his best creation.
The moods of these 2 poems are quite similar; they are both about grieving and a feeling of guilt. The type of guilt is different though. “On My First Sonne” is about the guilt of the father possibly causing the death of his son, whereas “Mid-Term Break” is more about the guilt of not seeing the brother prior to his death. In both poems there is no positive emotion. However, some of the lines in “On My First Sonne” could be classed as having a positive spin on them: “Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lye Ben. Jonson his best piece of poetrie.” This is positive because he wants the best for his dead son. Heaney’s poem doesn’t really have any attitude as it is more of an observational poem whereas Jonson’s poem is full of resentment, guilt and negativity. I think “Mid-Term Break doesn’t contain a lot of emotion because the loss of the brother hasn’t hit the boy yet.
Both of these poems should be read solemnly for them to have a lot of impact. “On My First Sonne” contains anger, jealousy and depression. But overall there is a sorrowful tone “rest in soft peace.”
“Mid-Term Break” is written as though the boy is numb because he doesn’t really show any emotion. The only emotion shown from this poem is the unusual sadness from the father “ In the porch I met my father crying – He had always taken funerals in his stride” and the mother who just “coughed out angry tearless sighs.” This is unusual as a woman is usually portrayed as the emotional one and the man as the one that holds everything together. Neither poems describe the actually deaths in detail so both poems are about how people feel afterwards.
“On My First Sonne” has the same basic structure as a sonnet: It is 12 lines long and ends in a rhyming couplet. “Mid-Term Break” however is written in stanzas 3 lines long whereas “On my First Sonne” is just written in one big block. This poem is also written in all rhyming couplets. This ends this subject in the readers mind so that section of the poem is complete. “Mid-Term Break” only has one rhyming couplet which is at the end.
In conclusion, I think that both are brilliantly written but I personally prefer “Mid-Term Break” as the last sentence “A four foot box, a foot for every year” has had a big impact on me. 'On my first Sonne' and 'Mid-term break' explore different ways a childhood death can affect you. In 'Mid-term Break', Heaney uses the many ways of morning (i.e. jealousy, anger, depression) to show the effects caused by the death of a child. Whereas, 'On my first Sonne' is more focused on giving reason to deaths and the aftermath caused by the death of the child. Both of these methods are very effective in helping the reader feel the trauma that the death of a child can cause.