The little girl’s innocence and immaturity appears in stanza five,
Two of us in the churchyard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the churchyard cottage I
Dwell near them with my mother.
The little girl does not hesitate to say that her brother and sister lie in the churchyard, she shows no emotion at all.
Wordsworth notices that it does not add up if there are meant to be seven in her family,
Yet you are seven; I pray you tell,
Sweet maid, how may this be?
The little maid insists that there are still seven in her family, even though two of them are dead.
The euphemism is very effective when she is telling again of how two are lying in the churchyard, it shows me that she does not want to believe that her brother and sister no longer alive. She believes that being separated from them is just a temporary situation. However, in stanza eleven she shows her feelings of no segregation from them.
My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit-
I sit and sing to them.
She has a relationship with her dead brother and sister and with this relationship she has no fear of being close to them, most little girls would be afraid to go near a graveyard!
Wordsworth is still persistent with the fact that there are only five left in the girl’s family and when he suggests that her two siblings are in Heaven she answers even more obstinately, as if she is shocked that he has suggested this,
O master! We are seven!
In the last stanza of the poem Wordsworth is still frustrated with the little girl but he sees that the spiritual mind of the little girl is vastly superior to his, he realizes that this little maid’s strong beliefs are unshakeable,
The little maid would have her will
And said, ‘Nay we are seven!’
Seamus Heaney’s poem Mid-term break is an emotional, personal poem. It portrays death in a different way from Wordsworth, Heaney expresses death more solemnly than the little girl in Wordsworth’s poem. I see bitterness, separation, and desolation in this poem. Bitterness is seen in the last stanza,
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Separation is seen in stanza four,
At ten o’clock an ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by nurses.
Desolation is seen in stanza two,
In the porch I met my father crying-
He had always taken funerals in his stride-
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
In stanza one Heaney shows the sense of loneliness beginning while he is still at school, his attitude to death is so different from that of the little girl’s.
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close
When Heaney uses the word ‘knelling’ it signifies the bitter theme of death.
Stanza two enhances the reality of death, the poet’s tone is sombre, and the emotion of Heaney’s father made the situation even more real, it made this death a different one,
In the porch I met my father crying-
He had always taken funerals in his stride-
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
Everyone had been affected by the death of the four-year-old boy, everyone except the baby who was very oblivious of the circumstances surrounding it.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram.
When Heaney writes about being embarrassed, it shows his innocence and childishness. When the old men said they were sorry for his trouble, he gives the impression that their use of the cliché annoyed him. He may have thought they did not care as much as he did, which was maybe true, the death of his little brother had such a great impact on him,
… old men standing up to shake my hand.
And tell me they were sorry for my trouble.
In stanza four Heaney remembers the exact time when the ambulance arrived,
At ten o’clock an ambulance arrived
The next stanza portrays a touching memory, which has engraved itself upon Heaney’s mind,
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Heaney remembers the pale complexion of his little brother, how painful this must have been to see his brother for the first time in six weeks, so lifeless and cold. This is a big contrast to the little girl, she does not say anything about the days surrounding the death of her siblings.
The last stanza describes the little boy in his coffin,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
The ‘poppy bruise’ is the only visible sign from the accident, it represents his memory of death. The little girl in Wordsworth’s poem does not have any memory of death, she tries to forget that they are dead, maybe that is why Heaney seems more cold and bitter than her.
In the last line Heaney tries to conceal his feelings of pain and sorrow. He writes as if the child’s short life was worthless, it is a very powerful last line,
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
In We are seven death is seen through the eyes of a child, it has no emotion or feeling, the little girl treats her dead brother and sister as if they were still living. However, in Mid-term break death is seen in a completely different light. It shows the chilling image of a great loss, full of emotion and sadness where Heaney is overwhelmed by death.
