Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

With the title 'Mid-Term Break' Heaney suggests that this is a poem focusing on a childhood memory. This was, however, no happy break from school. The first stanza does not explain what the reason for the break was, but Heaney's wait in the sick bay sets up a feeling that something is wrong. The use of the word 'knelling' rather than 'tolling' for the school bell has connotations of death. We discover during the course of the poem that Heaney was returning home for the funeral of his younger brother who had been killed in a road accident.

The second stanza shows how devastating this tragic accident was for Heaney's family. Heaney remembers that he met his father 'crying- / He had always taken funerals in his stride'. The third stanza, in contrast, opens with a description of the baby of the family that 'cooed and laughed and rocked the pram', showing that in some aspects family life went on as usual amid the grief.

The third and fourth stanzas are linked by enjambment and by the description of Heaney's feelings on confronting those who had come to pay their respects. Heaney felt 'embarrassed / By old men' as they stood up, shook his hand and expressed their sorrow. It must indeed have been strange and probably uncomfortable for a young boy to find himself in a situation of reversed roles. He was aware of 'whispers' as acquaintances told strangers that he was the eldest child of the family and attended boarding school.

The fourth and fifth stanzas are also linked by enjambment and show how different Heaney's mother's reaction to the event was from his father's. As she held his hand she 'coughed out angry tearless sighs', conveying the sense that she was too upset to cry but sensitive to the need of her eldest child for comfort.

In the fifth stanza Heaney describes in a matter-of-fact way that the ambulance brought the 'corpse', giving a sense that at first Heaney could perhaps not think of the body as being that of his brother. The tone changes, however, in the sixth stanza as Heaney goes up alone to see his brother's body the following morning. He describes the presence of snowdrops and candles as soothing the bedside; this is a transferred epithet, as they actually soothed his feelings. Heaney again uses enjambment to link this stanza with the seventh, mentioning that his brother now looked paler than the last time he had seen him six weeks previously. He uses the metaphor 'Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple', poppies being the colour of blood as well as a symbol of the dead. Heaney uses the word 'box' rather than coffin, and is reminded as he looks at his brother of the way he saw him in his cot. The final line of the seventh stanza tells us that the little boy had no 'gaudy scars' as the car knocked him to one side rather than running over him.

'Mid-Term Break' ends with a single line in contrast to the previous stanzas which are each three lines long. 'A four foot box, a foot for every year' describes poignantly how young the boy was and how tiny his coffin was. Heaney reserves the use of rhyme for the final two lines of the poem, where 'clear' and 'year' form a rhyming couplet.

The poem begins with factual statements almost devoid of emotion. It then moves through a phase of describing discomfort and difficult emotions in the presence of strangers, where the sentences become more complex. As Heaney reaches the point where he spends time alone with his brother's body, there is a feeling of calm. It is, however, extremely moving. Such a tragedy must have had a profound effect on Heaney and this poem conveys his feelings beautifully.

Anne Hathaway - Carol Ann Duffy

n her poem entitled 'Anne Hathaway', Carol Ann Duffy adopts the persona of Shakespeare's widow. The introductory quote from Shakespeare's will 'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed' reminds us that Shakespeare's best bed was reserved for guests, and that Anne inherited the one that she and her husband slept in. This bed becomes the focus of the fourteen-line poem.

In the opening two lines, Duffy uses a metaphor to express the magic of the bed in which Shakespeare made love to Anne: it was 'a spinning world / of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas'. More metaphors follow in lines three and four as Anne Hathaway recalls their lovemaking; she expresses the notion that Shakespeare would 'dive for pearls', and she describes the sweet words he said to her as 'shooting stars' that landed on her lips when he kissed her.

From line five to line ten Duffy uses imagery in a fascinating way that relates directly to the fact that Shakespeare was a writer. Anne sees her body as 'a softer rhyme to his ... now assonance', assonance being a figure of speech in which the same vowel sound is repeated. Then follows the charming personification of his touch, portrayed as 'a verb dancing in the centre of a noun', giving a feeling of grace and delicacy. Anne says that she sometimes dreamed that Shakespeare had 'written' her, wishing that she herself were part of his artistic creation. She metaphorically imagines the bed as 'a page beneath his writer's hands'. She sees their lovemaking as drama enacted through 'touch', 'scent' and 'taste'.

In lines eleven and twelve a contrast is created to the early magic of the poem in the description of how the guests, in the best bed, 'dozed on, / dribbling their prose'; no poetic lovemaking for them! But line twelve then switches to Anne's alliterative description of Shakespeare as 'My living laughing love'. She tells us in line thirteen how she treasures her memories of him with the metaphor 'I hold him in .the casket of my widow's head'. The final line compares this act to the way in which Shakespeare held Anne so lovingly in that second-best bed. The last two lines are a rhyming couplet, just as the last two lines of a Shakesperian sonnet would be, ending the poem with a sense of unity.

Duffy's 'Anne Hathaway' is a poem full of rich imagery, the tale of a woman who remembers her husband in a wonderful, loving way with no hint of sorrow. It is beautiful to read and to dwell on the magical pictures that are painted within it.

Shakespeare - Sonnet 130

The opening line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is a surprising simile: 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'. We might normally expect poets, especially those of Shakespeare's time, to praise the women they love by telling us that their eyes do shine like the sun. But a writer of Shakespeare's calibre is not going to follow the herd and make exaggerated comparisons; here he is describing reality.

Over the next few lines Shakespeare continues to describe his mistress in terms of the senses of sight, smell, sound and touch, but there is no flattery here. Colours are focused on first: 'Coral is far more red than her lips' red' tells us that lips are not naturally a bright red colour. Pale skin would have been sought after, but Shakespeare's mistress had dun-coloured breasts, dun being quite a dark colour. It seems that she did not have soft, sleek hair, as in line four it is compared to wire. Shakespeare relates that he has seen beautiful two-toned or 'damasked' roses, but that there is no rosiness in his mistress' cheeks.

The poet is quite forthright in telling us that his mistress has bad breath; in fact it 'reeks', and there is no hint of perfume. Line nine gives the first compliment: 'I love to hear her speak', but Shakespeare admits in the following line that he would actually prefer music to her voice. In line eleven Shakespeare implies that the way his mistress moves could not be compared to a goddess, and he goes on to say 'My mistress when she walks treads upon the ground', creating the impression that she is heavy-footed.

Sonnet 130 follows that usual structure of the Shakespearean sonnet, with the last two lines being a rhyming couplet, indented. This change marks a change in content too: Shakespeare says that in spite of all the defects, he genuinely loves his mistress: 'I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.' Appearances are not what matter where true love is concerned.

The poem is written in iambic pentameter, or lines of ten syllables with the stress on every second syllable. ('Coral' in line two does not quite fit into this pattern.) The rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, the usual pattern for a Shakespearean sonnet. The structure, then, conforms, but it is the content of the sonnet that is unusual. It is refreshing to read a love poem that is frank and honest rather than following meaningless traditions.