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Mid-Term Break - Seamus Heaney On my first Sonne - Ben Jonson Which

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Mid-Term Break - Seamus Heaney On my first Sonne - Ben Jonson Which poem expresses the experience of grief best?

On my first Sonne is a very direct way of expressing the grief that occurs when a child in the family dies. It is about the feelings that
Ben Jonson goes through, and the poem describes his emotions and thoughts in detail. On the other hand, Mid-Term Break uses indirect ways to portray grief, by describing events that happen after the death. "Farewell, thou child". On my first Sonne openly addresses the deceased boy in the poem. The poem is to him, and about him. Ben
Jonson uses faith to help him through the bereavement. Biblical phrases ("child of my right hand", "my sinne was" and "all his vowes")
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Mid term break is overall more subtle in its approaches to express grief. It describes the events surrounding the death, not the emotions the poet went through. Grief is also brought out through the choice of words; for example "knelling". "Knell" is a word used to describe the ringing of death bells, but not school bells.

The narrative in the first stanza takes a detached and spaced-out rhythm. This shows the shock that has hit the poet, and how he has distanced himself from the tragic event. Through the whole poem, the rhythm remains slow, revealing how the poet feels unsure and isolated.

"as my mother held my hand / in hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs" These lines show the grief, that Seams Heaney cannot express alone, being expressed by his mother for him.

He mentions his father crying in the fourth line because it is so out of the ordinary that he has to mention it. This in itself shows some of the shock of the event, and how he is frightened by the change. "It was a hard blow" has overtones of a heavy impact, as in the accident and as the emotions that follow.

"The corpse" is such in line 15 that it is unrecognisable; it is no longer his brother, but a corpse. So great is the disorientation surrounding being plucked suddenly from school into a surreal environment, he does not have time to contemplate his brother, and so the corpse remains as an unnamed, "staunched" body.

In this poem, the

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