“On My First Sonne” – Ben Jonson and “Mid-Term Break” – Seamus Heaney are both very similar poems, despite being written centuries apart. These poems both deal with the death of a child in both familiar and contrasting ways viewing both the emotional side and the physical rituals that surround death.

“On My First Sonne” is the more emotional of the two poems dealing with the father’s feelings of loss rather than thinking about the reasons for the death or the effects of this on the rest of the family. The poem seems to express Jonson’s confusion about how he should feel about this, his grief and sorrow conflicting with his belief in God and heaven. He appears confused as to why “will man lament the state he should envie” as he knows that his son has gone to a better place where he will “rest in soft peace” and escape the suffering that would surely plague him had he remained in this world. It is apparent that although saddened by this loss Jonson has been able to come to terms with it as he says a final “farewell” to his son, accepting that he won’t speak or spend time with him for a long while. Despite this Jonson retains feelings of guilt over his son’s untimely death as he believes that his “sinne was too much hope of thee”, it was his belief that God was angry at him for loving the child more than God himself and so his child, which had been “lent” to him, was taken away as punishment.  It seems that Jonson feels betrayed by God and fears that he is losing his faith. Pride in his son is clearly evident as Jonson claims him to be “his best piece of poetry”, a pun of the fact that he is indeed a poet meaning that his son was the best thing he ever created – his son clearly is not a poem though. The last line of this appears to be a lesson to all who read it, “as what he loves may never like too much”, a lesson that he can teach from experience is that when you love something it can be both hard and painful to let go of that when the time comes, whether or not it is better to love and lose than to merely like and lose is debatable.

“Mid-Term Break” is a particularly effective piece of poetry due to the sense of mystery that it builds up throughout. This is achieved by disguising the true meaning of the poem and only hinting at the situation until the very end. The poet continues to build his sense of mystery by making us ask questions about the poem, the first example of this in found in the last line of the first stanza, “our neighbours drove me home”. We immediately wonder why the neighbours were the ones to pick him up, and where are his parents? And why is he being taken home during school in the first place? These questions are answered in the next stanza as the poet arrives home to meet his father crying, it is just after this that we discover the reason for his parents not picking him up as he explains that “he had always taken funerals in his stride”. However, by answering the first question another is formed, whose funeral is it? How did they die? In the following line another man, Jim Evans has an unfortunate slip of the tongue as he says “it was a hard blow” however we don’t realise the significance of this quote until the penultimate stanza. By now it has become clear that someone has died however, the poet states that he was “embarrassed by old men standing up to shake my hand” it gives the feeling that he feels quite distant from the whole scenario as he is embarrassed by such a simple action. A reversal of role of sorts is displayed as his mother “coughed out angry tearless sighs”, it is a common expectation that females are more sensitive and emotional whereas men tend to be stronger mentally, this poem seems to take that theory and stamp all over it as the mother holds her self together, merely feeling angry whilst the father stands outside sobbing. Heaney, once again, distances himself from the situation by referring to the body as a “corpse”, thus making the victim seem less human. This is a very cold and matter of fact way to describe the body of a loved one, making it seem almost as if the poet doesn’t care about them. The first time that Heaney sees the victim, which we can assume is his younger brother, we expect quite a cold image of a empty room and a cold, stony body. The actual picture we are given however is much warmer and more peaceful with “snowdrops and candles soothing the bedside”. Heaney mentions that the only real difference between now and the last time he saw him is that the boy is “paler now” and “wears a poppy bruise on his left temple”.  “Wearing” the bruise gives the feeling that it doesn’t belong there, that it isn’t really part of him and could be removed despite the fact that we know this is untrue. In fact if it wasn’t for this little blemish he would look as if he were sleeping, “in his cot” as the poet says. In a way this is a contradiction of the inhuman feel that the body is given earlier when referred to as a corpse as feeling is brought back and we are able to imagine the boy as a person rather than a dead body. It is in the final line of this same stanza that the question has been left since the beginning is finally answered as it is explained to us that the reason the boys boasts “no gaudy scars” is because “the bumper knocked him clear”, a car hit him, this brings meaning to the passing comment from the earlier stanza “it was a hard blow”. What this poem lacks in personal feeling it more than makes up for in the amount of raw emotion that seems to radiate off the page. Even though the poet doesn’t directly refer to his own feelings the language and how it is used creates enough for us to still feel slightly saddened by the poem. “A four foot box, a foot for every year” is a particularly effective line, indirectly stating the victim as being so young delivers a blow of shock to the reader, this is strengthened by the fact that it is not mentioned until the very last line of the poem, a little piece of information that is withheld until the last moment when it draws the rest of the poem together by explaining any previous occurrences that may have confused the reader.

Overall “On My First Sonne” is much more sensitive poem though no more touching than Mid-term break which relies much more heavily on the feelings and actions of those surrounding the poet. While both poets handle the situations in very different ways it all comes down to the fact that losing a child is difficult to accept and that it often feels unfair that they had so little time to live, whereas we have much longer to enjoy life. Both poems use questions to grab the attention of the reader, Jonson asks the questions whilst Heaney makes you ask them all the while making you think about what happened. I believe that although On My First Sonne is an emotional poem that is simple to at least understand the basic ideas Mid-Term Break is the more effective poem, it gives us more of a glimpse of the boy even if it is just a little and knowing that he died in a freak accident makes the final realisation of his age just that little bit more dramatic.