Mid-term Break by Seamus Heaney

Mid-term Break by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

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.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

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,

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.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Poetry analysis of Mid-Term break by Seamus Heaney

The title 'Mid term break' gives us the disillusion that the poem is

going to be an upbeat poem; we associate it about a holiday away from

the stresses of school. The opening stanza upsets out expectations as

it has a melancholy tone and the usage of rather pessimistic words

such as 'close' and 'sick'. The sounds of the words also contribute to

the negative theme, as they are heavy, depressing and slow sounds like

'all', 'college', 'bell', 'knell'. The poet describes the bells

'knelling', which is significant as it give us the image of church

bells. In the first stanza it is not clear what exactly has happened

yet, you just think that the poet is merely sick.

In the second stanza we realise that some one has died but it is not