Discuss the Ways In Which Two Poems In The Anthology Explore The Effects Of Untimely Death
Jack Wise
When men went to war, there was every chance of them dying. But, their friends and family could never had prepared themselves for news of that person's death. Untimely death is a theme which is explored throughout the anthology in many ways, in particular, looking at the effects of the news of death upon loved ones.
"The Seed-Merchant's Son" is a poem by Agnes Grozier Herbertson that conveys the bereavement that a man feels for his son who has died at war. This poem continuously emphasises the youth of the boy, which constantly reiterates the idea of untimely death, as the boy died before he could live a full life. The fact that the man in the poem has lost "His dear, his loved, his only one" accentuates the notion that the man had love for only one child, and that child "died in the war". The young age of the boy is highlighted when the author tells us "his school books, into the cupboard thrust", and that they "have scarcely had time to gather dust". This shows that the boy has just left school, which adds to the pathos of the poem. This sense of pathos is continued throughout the poem, and is particularly noticable when the author adjusts the poetic syntax of the fifteenth line, to tell the reader that the man in the poem is "old to have fathered so young a son".
