Mid-Term Break

Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours 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.


“Mid-Term Break” Introduction



“Mid-Term Break” was published by Irish poet Seamus Heaney in his

1966 book Death of a Naturalist. The poem is about Heaney’s brother,
who was killed by a car in 1953 when he was only 4 years old, and
Heaney only 14. Personal and direct, the poem describes the
unexpected ways his family’s grieves as they confront this tragedy. It
also notes the way that grief may upset traditional social roles.


 Read the full text of “Mid-Term Break”


“Mid-Term Break” Summary


I spent the morning in the nurse’s office, counting the schoolbells as

they announced the end of classes. At two in the afternoon, our
neighbors picked me up and drove me back home.

When I got home, I saw my father crying on the porch—even though he

had usually been very composed at funerals. Big Jim Evans was there
too, and he said it was an especially tough loss.

The baby made little baby sounds and laughed and rocked back and
forth in its carriage when I came into the house. I was embarrassed
because the old men who'd come over to the house kept standing up
to shake my hand.

Those men said they were “sorry for my loss.” People whispered
around me, saying that I was the oldest child in the family and had
been away at boarding school. Meanwhile, my mother held my hand in
hers.


 She wasn't crying, but let out rough sighs that sounded like coughing
and were full of anger. At ten o’clock, the ambulance showed up with
the body, wrapped in bandages by the nurses at the hospital.

In the morning, I went up to the room where the body lay. There were
snowdrop flowers and candles by the bed to make the scene more
bearable. I looked at him for the first time in six weeks. He was paler
now than he was the last time I'd seen him.

He had a red bruise on the left side of his forehead. He lay in a four-
foot long box, just as though he were lying in bed. He didn’t have any
big, obvious scars. When the car’s bumper hit him, it knocked him out
of the way of the wheels.

His coffin was four feet long: one foot for each year that he lived.


“Mid-Term Break” Themes





The Nature of Grief

“Mid-Term Break” describes the aftermath of a tragedy: the speaker’s

four-year-old brother has been hit by a car and killed. But the poem
doesn’t spend a lot of time describing the accident or memorializing
the dead child. Instead, the poem focuses on the way that other people
 respond to this tragedy. It specifically portrays the various ways people
may express extreme grief—from sadness, to anger, to detachment.
For everyone, however, the poem suggests that grief, especially that
surrounding the death of a child, is a deeply destabilizing force—
something powerful enough to knock people out of their stereotypical
roles and routines and turn the world upside down.

The different figures in the poem respond to grief in different ways.

The speaker of the poem, for instance, is deeply uncomfortable with
the attention that people pay to him because of the tragedy,
“embarrassed / by old men standing up to shake [his] hand.” While the
speaker is awkward in the wake of tragedy—and even seems afraid to
reveal his emotions—his father openly expresses a profound sadness.
When the speaker first sees him, he is “crying” even though “he had
always taken funerals in his stride.” In other words, death doesn’t
usually upset the speaker's father, but he has broken down over the
death of his son. And the speaker’s mother has yet another reaction:
she’s mad, spitting out “angry tearless sighs.”

The speaker’s parents’ reactions notably shake up traditional gender

roles, underscoring the profound ability of grief to upend expected
behavior. Recall that the poem is set in Ireland in the 1950s, a world in
which strict social norms governed the way that people showed
emotion, even how they grieved. Someone like the speaker’s father
would be expected to be stoic—to bear his grief silently (as indeed the
speaker implies he has done in the past, “always” taking “funerals in
his stride” when the deceased was not so close to him). Instead, he
 weeps openly. The speaker’s mother, meanwhile, is “tearless.” Her
response to the tragedy is rage.

And yet, no one seems to object to the speaker’s parents responding

the way that they do—the other people in the poem silently accept
their behavior. In this way, the poem suggests that grief can reshape
people’s social roles—especially when it comes from something as
tragic as the death of a child. In turn, the ability of profound grief to
disrupt social roles calls those roles themselves into question—perhaps
even suggesting that the world itself is not the rational, ordered place
people that societal traditions make it out to be. Essentially, grief
makes the world stop making sense.

This idea is echoed towards the end of the poem when the speaker
suggests that his brother’s death was random, quick and “clear.”
There’s no reason or justification for it; it was simply an accident. That
raises broader questions, specifically about how such an accident can
even happen if the world is just, if it makes sense. Thus the speaker
notes that the “Snowdrops / and candles”—symbols of rebirth and
prayer—“soothed the bedside,” but not the people who visit it to be his
brother’s body; these traditional consolations fail to actually console.
Grief knocks people out of their normal roles, the poem ultimately
suggests, causing them to question the justice and order of the very
world they live in. And though the accident didn’t leave any scars on
the speaker’s brother, it has clearly left a series of deep scars on the
living.


Where this theme appears in the poem:

 Lines 1-22

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of
“Mid-Term Break”


Lines 1-3

I sat all ...

... drove me home.

The first three lines of “Mid-Term Break” introduce the poem’s theme
and its form. The poem begins with the speaker sitting in a “college
sick bay.” In other words, he’s in the nurse’s office at a boarding
school. Because the poem is autobiographical, one can assume that
this is an Irish boarding school in the 1950s. The poet, Seamus Heaney,
grew up in Ireland in the 1950s and attended boarding school there.
The speaker doesn’t explain right away why he’s in the “sick bay”—
whether he’s sick or not. But the poem provides some hints right away
that something more unusual—and more serious—is going on.


 First, in line 2, the speaker notes that he spends the morning
“Counting bells knelling classes to a close.” In a literal sense, he’s
simply listening to the bells that ring when a class period ends. But the
“bells” can also be read as symbols, especially since the speaker
describes them as “knelling.” Bells are an important part of church
services. Churches ring bells to mark funerals; funeral bells are often
described as “knelling.” In other words, the bells remind the speaker of
funeral bells. And that makes the bells symbolic: they symbolize death
and burial.

This is an ominous, unsettling symbol to appear at the beginning of the

poem. It suggests that something is seriously wrong. And that sense
increases in the next line, when the speaker’s “neighbours” show up to
drive him home—not his parents. Though the speaker hasn’t yet
directly acknowledged the tragedy at the heart of the poem, one has a
sense that something tragic has happened.

The poem is very direct and unpretentious. Despite the symbol in the
2nd line, the speaker generally avoids figurative language,
like metaphors and similes. The speaker is reporting on this tragedy
as honestly as possible, in a straightforward fashion. The use of the
past tense in the stanza (and throughout the poem) indicates to the
reader that the speaker is describing something that’s already
happened: he’s remembering this tragedy, rather than describing it as
it happens. This means that the speaker has had some time to process
it.


Furthermore, the speaker often seems very composed: it’s surprising

how he can describe the events surrounding his brother’s death so
directly. This composure is reflected in the poem’s form: the way that
it’s organized, fairly neatly, into tercets. In this opening stanza, the
poem is unrhymed and uses both enjambment and end-stop in an
un-patterned way that feels natural, unforced.

But there are also signs that the speaker is having trouble maintaining
his composure. For example, his meter is often off: the poem flirts
with being in iambic pentameter, but it never really achieves a solid,
steady meter. For instance, after a fairly iambic first line, line 2 starts
with a trochee (stressed unstressed), followed by
a spondee (stressed stressed). Then it has an iamb
(unstressed stressed), a pyrrhic (unstressed unstressed), and another
iamb:

Counting | bells knell- | ling clas- | ses to | a close

Of this line’s five feet, only two of them are iambs (though the pyrrhic
here could maybe be read differently). The speaker is struggling to
write a formal poem—and sometimes failing. He can’t quite maintain
the control necessary to sustain the poem. This suggests that there are
powerful emotions under the poem’s direct, straightforward language,
emotions that gradually come out as the poem proceeds.



“Mid-Term Break” Symbols



Bells


 “Mid-Term Break” is not a very symbolic poem: the speaker prefers to
describe the days after his brother’s death in direct, unadorned
language. But he does use a powerful and important symbol right at
the start of the poem: “bells.” In the poem, these bells represent death
and burial.

Literally speaking, these are the bells that ring to mark when classes
start and end at the speaker’s school. But the “bells” also have a
symbolic function. Bells are an important part of church services; in
particular, churches will often ring bells to mark funerals. There’s a
specific word that’s often used to describe these bells, a word that the
speaker himself uses—a funeral bell is often described as “knelling.”

In other words, the bells at his school sound like funeral bells. And that
makes the bells themselves symbolic: they symbolize death and burial,
the end of life. In other words, the speaker’s grief manifests itself in
the way he remembers the ordinary sounds around him: they take on
extra meaning, alongside their usual role in day-to-day life.

Where this symbol appears in the poem:

 Line 2: “bells”



Snowdrops

Snowdrops are white flowers. They are usually the first flowers to
bloom, and for this reason they often symbolize hope and rebirth. The
blossoms of snowdrops come out right as winter is ending and spring’s
beginning. (Hence their name: they look like the snow that’s often on
 the ground as they first bloom.) The flowers are thus a good sign that
spring is right around the corner. This is the root of their symbolic
meaning: since winter is often associated with death and spring with
rebirth, the flowers thus symbolize the possibility of resurrection,
renewal, hope.

They are religious or spiritual symbols in the poem—they suggest that

death isn’t the end for the speaker’s brother, that he might hope for
another life in Heaven. This symbol of hope and rebirth doesn’t seem
particularly convincing to the speaker, however. He notes that they
“soothed the bedside”—but not, significantly, the people gathered at
the bedside to mourn his brother’s death. In other words, the speaker
invokes this religious symbol in part to show that religion isn’t
comforting him in his grief.

Where this symbol appears in the poem:

 Line 16: “Snowdrops”




Candles

In line 17, the speaker notes that there are “candles” at the “bedside”
where his brother’s body lies. In addition to being actual candles, these
candles are also symbolic. They symbolize religious rituals—and the
comfort and reassurance those religious rituals often bring.


Candles are an important part of Catholic religious rituals; Catholics

often light candles in memory of the dead. That comfort doesn’t seem
to be working very well for the speaker. Even though there are flowers
and “candles” at the “bedside,” he doesn’t personally find them
soothing: instead, they “soothed the bedside.” In other words, the
speaker invokes the “candles” in part to show that his grief is so
serious that even religion doesn’t make him feel better.

Where this symbol appears in the poem:

 Line 17: “candles”


“Mid-Term Break” Poetic Devices &
Figurative Language


End-Stopped Line

Although “Mid-Term Break” uses both enjambment and end-stop, it

does not follow a clear pattern in doing so. Instead, the poem tends to
switch unpredictably between the two. For instance, lines 4-6 ("In the
porch ... a hard blow.") are all end-stopped. As a result, each of these
lines feels definite, decisive. The end-stops encourage the reader to
 pause and reflect on the line itself before moving on to the next line.
These lines are slow and deliberate. Though they describe a difficult,
tragic scene, the speaker remains in control, composed.

But the next stanza, lines 7-9, is all enjambed. Just when the reader
feels like the poem is establishing a pattern, the speaker switches
things up. These lines feel rushed: the reader speeds down the page
through each enjambment. The speaker’s composure and control seem
to have suddenly evaporated. These unexpected shifts happen
throughout the poem. Establishing a pattern, then breaking it, moving
between heavily enjambed and heavily end-stopped sections, the
speaker seems to deal with unstable emotions. He is composed and
controlled in one moment, chaotic in the next.

In this sense, the poem’s end-stops and enjambments reflect the

speaker’s emotions as he reflects on his brother’s tragic death. The
death was many years ago, so the speaker can reflect on it with
composure and control. However, sometimes the full force of the
tragedy returns and the speaker loses his composure—despite the
intervening years.

Where end-stopped line appears in the poem:

 Line 2: “close.”
  Line 3: “home.”
 Line 4: “crying—”
 Line 5: “stride—”
 Line 6: “blow.”
 Line 10: “trouble'.”
 Line 11: “eldest,”
 Line 13: “sighs.”
 Line 15: “nurses.”
 Line 18: “now,”
 Line 19: “temple,”
 Line 20: “cot.”
 Line 21: “clear.”
 Line 22: “year.”


Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mid-
Term Break”



Form

“Mid-Term Break” might best be thought of as an elegy, but that

doesn't mean it follows a strict form (unlike, say, the sonnet). For its
first 21 lines, it’s written in tercets, or three-line stanzas. Though few
of its lines are metrically regular, it often comes close to being
in iambic pentameter—indeed, one might say it flirts with being
in meter. This gives the poem a sense of regularity and organization.


 Though the poem describes a tragedy—the shattering event of a
young sibling's death—it mostly maintains a sense of composure.
There are irregularities here and there, moments where the meter
breaks down, but the regular pattern of the stanzas suggests that the
speaker has achieved some closure. He's talking about something that
happened a long time ago. It's tragic, but he's also had time to process
his feelings. He’s reflecting on this event, rather than experiencing it
directly. At least, that's the way it feels until the poem's last line.

The poem's formal regularity breaks down in its last line. Although all
the other stanzas in the poem have been three lines long, the last line
is its own stanza. It almost feels like the speaker started to write
another stanza and then couldn’t continue. The memory of brother's
coffin takes him right back to the tragedy, the full grief he felt right
after it happened. And this happens with so much intensity that the
speaker can’t keep going. The poem’s form thus reflects both the
speaker's composure as well as the power of his grief—a power which
knocks the poem off its tracks.




Meter

“Mid-Term Break” is—sort of—written in iambic pentameter. Iambic

pentameter follows a da DUM rhythm, with five of these poetic feet in
each line. One can hear this rhythm in line 7:


The ba-
| by cooed | and laughed | and rocked | the pram

Here, the iambic rhythm of the line imitates the baby rocking back and
forth in its carriage.

However, more often than not, the poem fails to uphold this rhythm,
introducing extra syllables or metrical variations. For example, line
2 has the right number of syllables for a line of iambic pentameter. But
its ten syllables don’t quite follow the usual rhythm:

Counting | bells knel- | ling clas- | ses to | a close

The line starts with a trochee (DUM da), followed by

a spondee (DUM DUM). Then it has an iamb, an
arguable pyrrhic (da da), and another iamb. Of the line’s five feet, only
two of them are iambs.

Or look at line 5 which expands to 12 syllables:

He had | always | taken | funer- | als in | his stride


 The last two feet are iambic, but the first four are all trochees. The
strong rhythm of these trochees, along with the line's two extra
syllables, captures the father's effort to come to terms with the loss of
his son.

The poem thus flirts with meter—it’s almost metrical, but not quite.
The meter of the poem is often a measure of control and composure: a
poem in good meter suggests a speaker who’s in control of their poem.
The speaker of “Mid-Term Break” seems almost composed, almost
under control. Yet his grief is still raw, even though he’s had time to
process it. That continued rawness shows in the rough edges of the
poem—its uneven, imprecise meter.




Rhyme Scheme

“Mid-Term Break” does not have a rhyme scheme. Most of its lines
are technically unrhymed, though many flirt with rhyme,
using assonance to connect words in a rhyme-like way.

For instance, assonance connects words like "close" and "home" in the
first stanza via the long /o/ sound. It connects “crying” and “stride” in
the second stanza as well as “sighs” and “arrived” in the fifth stanza
with their assonant /i/ sounds. It also connects "pram" and "hand" in
the third stanza with the /a/ sound.


One can imagine why the speaker doesn’t want to use full-out rhyme:
rhyme can convey a sense of closure. It tends to wrap things up, to
make them feel complete and finished. But this is a poem about grief
that suggests that grief doesn’t have a neat ending, it doesn’t ever
really resolve itself. So a regular rhyme scheme would be inappropriate
for the poem and its depiction of grief. Instead, the poem's suggestive
use of assonance captures how the act of grieving is never fully
complete.

However, the poem does have one perfect rhyme in a surprising place:
the final two lines of the poem rhyme “clear” with “year.” The rhyme
draws a strong connection between the “bumper” that “knocked" the
speaker's brother "clear” and the “four-foot box” where he now lies. In
other words, it matter-of-factly emphasizes that the speaker’s brother
is in a coffin because he got hit by a car.

The rhyme also suggests a kind of closure, contrary to the rest of the
poem which has avoided closure. Here, it marks the sudden end of the
brother’s life. But the speaker doesn’t share in that closure, doesn’t
find it comforting and reassuring. The poem’s single rhyme thus hints
that only the dead experience closure; the living simply have to live
with grief.



“Mid-Term Break” Speaker



The speaker of “Mid-Term Break” is someone in high school whose

brother has been hit and killed by a car. The poem is autobiographical,
based on a real incident in Seamus Heaney’s life. So it’s fair to say that
the speaker of the poem is Heaney himself, even though the speaker
never explicitly acknowledges who he is. The speaker reflects on his
brother’s tragic death and the way his family and his community
responded to that death. Indeed, the speaker spends the poem
describing the time after his brother died: he has little to say about the
accident itself. His focus is on the living, how they cope—or fail to cope
—with tragedy.

The speaker has a little bit of distance from the tragedy: he’s not
narrating the poem as it occurs, but reflecting on it—thinking about
something that happened years ago. (In fact, the poem was first
published in 1966, thirteen years after Heaney’s brother was killed.)
This gives the speaker a certain amount of composure: although he’s
discussing something tragic, disturbing, and senseless, he’s able to
describe the days after the tragedy with clarity and composure. This
composure is reflected in the poem’s organized form.

But that clarity and composure break down at the end of the poem—
and the poem’s form breaks down too, switching from three line
stanzas to a single, isolated line as the poem ends. When the speaker
thinks too hard about this tragedy, he loses his distance from it, so that
the tragedy remains as raw as it was when it happened.



“Mid-Term Break” Setting


As “Mid-Term Break” opens, it’s set in a boarding school—a “college”—

in Northern Ireland. The speaker waits in the "sick bay," or nurse's
office, listening to the college’s bells ringing to mark the beginning and
end of classes. Then his “neighbours” show up and drive him home, to
a village. Most of the poem takes place in this village—more
specifically, in the speaker's house in the village, with members of the
community dropping by to pay their respects to the speaker and his
family. So the setting of the poem is very intimate and specific: a
single house in Northern Ireland.

But it’s also important to think about the poem’s setting more
generally. The poem is set in Northern Ireland in the 1950s, and the
culture of that place at that time deeply shape the poem. It’s reflected
in the way that people respond to tragedy. For many of the characters
in the poem, like the "strangers" who gather in the house, grief feels
like a social obligation: they come to the house to pay their respects
because they feel like they have to.

This culture also forms the background against which to understand

the speaker’s mother and father. They act in ways that break with the
stereotypes and expectations that usually constrain men and women’s
 behavior: instead of being stoic and tough, for example, the father
bursts into tears. And instead of being weepy, the mother is full of
rage.

The poem’s setting is thus both physical and cultural. And its cultural
backdrop helps the reader judge the way people behave in the poem:
whether they’re simply following social norms or rebelling against
them as they process their grief.


Literary and Historical Context of “Mid-
Term Break”


Literary Context

“Mid-Term Break” was written in the 1960s in Ireland. It is part of a

group of poems that eventually became Seamus Heaney’s book, Death
of a Naturalist, published in 1966. A “Naturalist” is someone who
studies nature. It’s an old-fashioned term, used to describe 19th
century gentlemen scientists, rather than contemporary researchers.
The book helped to establish Heaney’s reputation as one of the most
important English-language poets in the second half of the 20th
century—and, as a result, a poem like "Mid-Term Break” gives its
readers a good sense of what Heaney’s priorities are as a poet.

Unlike some earlier twentieth century poets, like T.S. Eliot, Heaney
isn’t much interested in elaborate, difficult language—or
complicated symbols and metaphors. Instead, his writing is
straightforward and direct. He describes real people and uses the
language they themselves might use. One can imagine, for instance,
that “Big Jim Evans” would really use a phrase like “hard blow.” It’s a
simple, direct expression—unpretentious, but full of sympathy and
understanding.

In this sense, one might describe Heaney’s poetry as itself a kind of

“naturalism.” It emerges from a direct, careful study of real people:
their language, their habits, their culture. And it offers its readers a
window into their lives. Indeed, it presents their lives as worthy of
attention. This, in itself, is an important and subtle argument. Irish
people have often lived with cruel stereotypes about their intelligence
and cultural achievement. Heaney’s poem suggests that these people
are worth paying attention to—that their lives and language are as
valuable as other more traditional literary subjects.

Historical Context

“Mid-Term Break” is about a family in Northern Ireland in the 1950s.

Northern Ireland has a complicated and long history. Beginning in the
1600s, English settlers moved to Ireland and—in a series of violent
conflicts—took control over the island. Some Irish people converted to
Protestantism, largely in the north of the country. This was the religion
of the English settlers, and the decision to convert aligned those Irish
people with the English. But many remained Catholic, the religion of
Ireland prior to the English conquest. (Heaney himself was Catholic,
although his family was from Northern Ireland). By the twentieth
century, Irish society was thus deeply divided between Protestants and
Catholics. And it remained under English rule—which was often violent
and repressive.
 Religion was thus a key part of Irish life, no matter what side one found
oneself on. And during the 1950s, when the poem was written, religion
often dictated how people approached things like gender and grief. It
structured people’s social lives, their behavior, and their relationships.
That historical context is important for understanding “Mid-Term
Break.” The poem itself describes a “break”: a moment when such
social standards break down. Because the death of a child is such a
sharp blow, some of the people in the poem act in ways that defy the
expected standards around gender and grief. In order to see this as an
act of defiance, one must first understand the oppressive standards
that usually governed their lives.

‘Mid-Term Break’ by Seamus Heaney describes the

emotional turmoil experienced by a speaker who has lost
a loved one in a traumatic way.

‘Mid-Term Break’ was published in Death of a

Naturalist, Heaney’s most-famous volume, in 1966. It is
dedicated to Heaney’s brother who died in a car accident
in 1953 when he was only four years old. Heaney was 14
at the time. The text is incredibly personal and moving
while at the same time analytical as Heaney tries to
understand social roles.

Summary
‘Mid-Term Break’ by Seamus Heaney describes the
emotional turmoil experienced by a speaker who has lost a
loved one in a traumatic way.
The poem begins with the speaker stating that he is
being quarantined within a “sick bay” of his college. It is
here he waited for his neighbours to come and pick him
up and take him home. The boy has suffered a loss, one
which does not become clear until the final line of the
poem.

He travels home and is met by his suffering family. His

father is crying, and his mother is unable to even speak.
There are many strangers around attempting to
sympathize with the family, but their efforts appear
awkward and are often unwanted.

The body arrives via ambulance the next day and the
boy takes a look at it when he is alone one morning.
There are no great injuries that he can see but he knows
this is due to the fact that this person was thrown by the
bumper of a car. The final line states that the coffin will
only be four feet long, the same length as the child’s
age, making clear to the reader that the speaker has lost
his young brother in a terrible accident.

The Poem Analysis Take

Expert Insights by Joe Santamaria

B.A. in English and Related Literature, M.Phil in Irish Literature

While Heaney is one of my favourite poets, this is one poem I

never look forward to re-reading and I mean that as a
compliment. There is something so raw, and so real about
the ways in which the poem's figures handle, or sometimes
ignore, their own feelings of grief that I find haunting. This is
testament to the poem's power and emotional candour, as
well as reminding me of the horrific reality that awaited
Heaney when he heard the news that his brother had been
killed.

Themes
In ‘Mid-Term Break’ Heaney engages with themes of loss
and grief. It focuses on the aftermath of the car accident
that killed Heaney’s younger brother. The accident is in
the background of how everyone around Heaney
responds. There is anger, pure sorrow, and detachment
that he observes in his family members. The death threw
off the family dynamic and shifted the way that
everyone responded to everyday events. Gender roles
shift, and the reader is left to contend with their own
ideas of what grief looks like and how it can change
one’s life.

Structure and Form

‘Mid-Term Break’ by Seamus Heaney is a seven-stanza
poem that is made up of sets of three lines, or tercets.
These tercets remain consistent throughout the poem
until the reader comes to the final line. This line is
separate from the preceding stanzas and acts as a point
of summary for the entire piece. ‘Mid-Term Break’ does
not follow a specific rhyme scheme, but is still unified
through the similar line lengths and the moments of the
half and full rhymes that exist throughout its text.
Literary Devices
Heaney makes use of several literary devices in ‘Mid-
Term Break.’ These include but are not limited
to alliteration, enjambment, caesura, and imagery. The
latter is one of the most important techniques a poet can
make use of in their work. Without imagery, the reader
will likely leave the poem unaffected by what they’ve
read. For example, these lines from the first stanza:
“Counting bells knelling classes to a close. / At two
o’clock our neighbours drove me home.”

Alliteration is seen quite clearly in the first stanza in

which the poet uses a number of words that start with a
“c” sound. These include, “college,” “counting,”
classes,” “clock,” and “close,” all within three lines.

Caesura and enjambment are formal devices that impact

the way readers understand the lines. Enjambment is
concerned with line breaks while caesura is focused on
pauses in the middle of lines. For example, the last line
of the poem reads: “A four-foot box, a foot for every
year.” There are several examples of enjambment as
well. For instance, the transition between lines one and
two of stanza six as well as line three of stanza four and
line one of stanza five.

Analysis, Stanza by Stanza

Stanza One
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home.
The poem begins with the speaker stating that he has
been trapped within a “sick bay” of his college medical
center for the entire morning. One might initially think
that this is due to an illness that the speaker has
contracted, something that requires he be kept separate
from the rest of the student body. This is and isn’t the
case. As the reader will learn in the following stanzas,
the speaker has lost someone very close to him, and the
“sick bay” is where he is made to wait for his
“neighbours” to drive him home.

The poet has chosen to emphasize the alienating impact

that loss has on someone by keeping the speaker
separate from any friends or colleagues he might have
in the school. He is made to suffer alone so no one has
to see what he is going through.

While waiting, he knows the school day is going on

outside the wall of the office. He can hear the bells
ringing and understands that it is “two o’clock” before
anyone comes to get him. The depth of his loss is made
clear by the fact that it is not a family member who
retrieves him, but the neighbours.

Stanza Two
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.

In the second stanza, the speaker has arrived home and

the first thing he sees is his father on the porch crying.
This is a shocking sight, as in the past, when they have
attended funerals before, the father has always “taken
[them] in his stride.” He has never been very moved, at
least on the outside, by death. But there is something
different about this loss.

A neighbour, named “Big Jim Evans,” comes up to the

speaker and tells him that this loss was a “hard blow” on
the speaker’s father.

Stanza Three
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
(…)
By old men standing up to shake my hand

He is now inside the house and with his closest relations.

There is a baby in the room, blissfully unaware of the
mourning going on around it. It is there, “cooing” in it’s
“pram.”

The men in the room, associates of his father’s and

friends of the family, stand up and “shake [his] hand”
when he comes into the house. He is caught off guard
and embarrassed by this action. He does not know how
to respond to it. At this point, the reader still does not
know who it is that the speaker has lost.

Stanza Four
And tell me they were ‘sorry for my trouble’.
(…)
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In the fourth stanza, it is made clear that it is not his

mother who has died, as she is there holding his hand as
all the strangers speak to him. Endless numbers line up
and tell him how sorry they are for his “trouble.” Even
here, at this funeral, the men and women are unable to
confront what has happened. It is “trouble” that has
occurred, rather than the death of a loved one, or
important loss.

The strangers are all around the small family. The young
speaker is able to hear them telling one another that he
is the “eldest child” who was “away at school” when
whatever happened, happened.

Stanza Five
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
(…)
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the
nurses.

The mother is still holding her son’s hand. She is unable

to express herself, all she can manage is coughing out
“angry tearless sighs.” The loss is too great for real
meaningful words.

Finally, the ambulance arrives. An amount of time has

passed since the boy first learned of this loss and the
corpse has been processed. It has been “stanched and
bandaged by the nurses.” It is no longer bleeding, and
all serious wounds have been covered.

Stanza Six
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
(…)
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
In the second to last stanza, the speaker is finally able to
confront the body. He goes up to the room in which the
body is kept the “Next morning” and sees the
“Snowdrops / And candles” beside the bed. It is a
peaceful scene, one of meditation and quiet
contemplation.

This is the first time the boy has seen this person in “six
weeks.” It is unclear how long it has been since the
accident that killed this loved one, but the boy has been
away at school for quite some time.

Stanza Seven
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
(…)
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

In the final stanza, and in the hanging of the last line,

the identity of the person is finally revealed. First, the
speaker gives some details regarding the state of the
body. There is a red, “poppy” colored bruise on the side
of the person’s head, but other than that there are no
“gaudy scars” that would tell of what happened in the
accident.

In the next phrase, it is revealed that the body is in such

a state because the “bumper knocked him clear” of the
greater accident. Whoever this person was, they died
from the impact of a car.

The final line is that which makes clear the person’s

identity. The body belongs to the speaker’s brother, who
was only four years old when he was killed. His body
rests in a box that is suited for his age and size. It is only
four feet long, the same length as the years he lived on
the earth.

Similar Poetry
Readers who enjoyed ‘Mid-Term Break’ should also
consider reading some of Heaney’s other best-known
poems. For example:

 ‘Digging‘
 ‘The Other Side‘
 ‘The Harvest Bow‘

The latter was published in Heaney’s 1979

collection Field Work. It speaks of nostalgia and
memories connected to childhood. ‘The Other
Side‘ explores themes of division and difference in
religion as well as the possibility of reconciliation. These
are common topics in Heaney’s work in regard to
Northern Ireland. ‘Digging‘ is also considered to be
autobiographical in nature. It depicts Heaney sitting
inside while his father works outside in the garden.

Poetry+ Review Corner

Seamus Heaney is one of the most recognisable names in English-
language poetry. It’s quite possible that you could hear his writerly voice
as a child, study him as you get older (his poems are often anthologised
or selected for GCSE and A Level study) and come to regard him as an
old familiar friend through your adult life. Heaney won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1995 and turned down the position of Poet Laureate
when it was offered to him, possibly because he regards himself as
Irish, not British: after lunching with the Queen he said, “I have nothing
against the Queen personally”; but in 1982 he published the lines, “My
passport’s green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast the
Queen.” Before his death in 2013 he wrote about Irish community life,
people’s connection with the land (Storm on the Island;
Bogland ), politics and history (particularly The Troubles), his own rural
upbringing and journey to becoming a writer (Follower; Digging;
Personal Helicon). A recognisable Heaney trait is filtering subject matter
through a child’s looking-glass lens. His most famous poems (Death of
a Naturalist and Blackberry Picking) are directly concerned with
childhood, in particular the loss of childhood innocence as one grows
older. Mid-Term Break (from the collection Death of a Naturalist, written
in 1966) shares this theme, which it explores through recounting an
experience from the poet’s own history; when Seamus Heaney was still
a child, his younger brother Christopher was hit and killed by a car:

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

On first reading, apart from obviously being written in stanzaic

form (which we’ll get to later) the poem is actually quite, well…
unpoetic! In some respects, it’s more like a narrative in the way it tells
the story of Heaney’s discovery of his brother’s death. The poem
contains clear narrative features such as the building of suspense (see
how the poem counts down time for us: two o’clock, ten o’clock, next
morning), direct speech (‘sorry for my trouble’) and even
brief characterisation: I met my father crying – he had always taken
funerals in his stride – In a way, Mid-Term Break is a narrative: it follows
a well-worn narrative pattern called the ‘rites of passage’ by which a
young person must leave the safety (and ignorance) of childhood and
undergo a journey of discovery. Along the way, the child acquires
special knowledge and undergoes a transformation, shedding the
childish self like a snake sheds a skin and emerging as a new, older and
wiser person. That’s why the poem begins in the college sick bay, which
represents the safe world of a child; soon the boy is taken home, where
he must pass through various adult hands, all ushering him towards the
place where he will discover the truth hiding at the heart of the poem.
The room in which he encounters his brother – and has his first
experience of the reality of death – is the place where this awful
knowledge is contained and it is no accident that he is left alone to
experience his first taste of the adult world all by himself.
 His
neighbours come to drive the boy home instead of his parents, one of
several clues that alert the reader that there is something wrong ahead.

At the start of the story, though, the boy is unaware of what lies in store;
both he and we, the readers, wonder what is happening to take him out
of class and home from school early. There are a couple of
clues: knelling is a word used only to describe the sound of a bell; it is
especially associated with bells that ring to proclaim somebody’s death.
In a ‘rites of passage’ story, in order for a person to grow and change
their childish self must symbolically die. As well as foreshadowing the
death of the speaker’s younger brother, the bells he hears counting
down classes to a close also signify the death of his childhood and
induction into the adult world. Alliteration plays a part here. Look at all
those hard C sounds in the line above, and add college
sick bay and two o’clock. This kind of alliteration is known
as guttural. Guttural is good at exposing negative emotions, and also
resembles the ticking of a clock, counting down the time until the boy
must experience the truth that is waiting for him.
 His
father had been crying – his reaction hints at the depths of grief the men
in the poem work so hard to conceal.

When the boy arrives home he meets his father standing on the porch.
Here is an example of a ‘threshold’: a boundary between two ‘worlds.’ If
the school represented a ‘safe’ place where he was sheltered and
protected from hard truth, his house is the site of his revelation and the
place where he will be exposed to the truth about how things are in the
‘real’ world. The porch is the dividing line between these two ‘worlds.’
His father (and Big Jim Evans) function as symbolic gatekeepers. They
know the truth, but do not reveal it to the boy, except through cryptic
clues such as it had been a hard blow, language that suggests
concealed emotion and also echoes the accident that killed his younger
brother. Instead they usher him inside, where he will be passed from
hand to hand, until he reaches his brother’s bedside. At this point, he
will be by himself and have to face the reality of the world alone.
Just as in a good narrative, perspective is a crucial reason why the
poem works so well. The speaker’s youth and naïvete brings a touch
of irony into the poem. Each stanza gives more little clues, information
hiding in plain sight, that the boy’s youth prevents him from fully
understanding. But as readers looking in from outside, it’s relatively
easy for us to piece together the puzzle at the heart of the story. The
first puzzle-piece is probably the wordknelling in stanza 1. It’s the kind of
word a young boy wouldn’t know (the adult writer uses it as he looks
back on his childhood experience). In stanza 2 – embedded inside
two hyphens as an extra detail – is the admission that the speaker’s
father had always taken funerals in his stride. In the third stanza old
men stand up in formal way to shake my hand, and in the fourth we can
infer from the whispers that informed strangers I was the eldest that
something has happened to a member of the boy’s family. By the time
the ambulance arrived with the corpse most readers will be prepared for
the awful knowledge of the boy’s younger brother’s tragic accident.

For
more information about the poem’s form – including the contributions of
rhythm, stanzas and repetitions – visit the shop and download the
bespoke study bundle for Mid-Term Break. Inside you’ll get quizzes,
activities, worksheets and a fully editable, interactive powerpoint with
annotations for every line of the poem. You’ll also get help and advice
for analytical essay writing, with one completed essay plan for you to
practice with.
Written about a childhood time when nothing in the adult world makes
sense (you can almost hear the boy thinking, ‘Why are they whispering?
Why are these old men standing up to shake my hand?’) the voice of
the speaker conveys Heaney’s thoughts and curiously detached
feelings through this bewildering day. Interestingly, most of
the diction in the poem is cool, calm and collected, and the young
speaker comes across as matter-of-fact above anything else. Read the
poem again to try and find examples of emotive language – it’s tough,
right? That’s not to say the poem isn’t emotional, but emotion comes
more from the reader’s grasping of the situation than from the poem
itself. The boy himself reports everything with simplicity: stanched and
bandaged is quite clinical; I saw him for the first time in six weeks a
simple matter-of-fact statement. The clinical, detached tone aptly
conveys the way a young boy might approach his first encounter with
death. Too young to really grasp the significance of events, he reacts in
a way that might even be construed as indifferent.

The
innocence of the baby is an incongruous detail which throws the
stoicism of the men into even sharper relief.

Something the poem explores wonderfully well is the stoic, masculine

way that men deal with their emotions, particularly grief. The speaker’s
father had been crying, but the poem is quick to point out that normally
he takes things in their stride. Big Jim Evans is unable to use
straightforward language when talking to the young boy and
euphemises his feelings as a hard blow. Euphemism is language that
is uses to disguise, or avoid, speaking hard truths and it’s again ironic
that somebody big, when faced with a harsh reality, finds it difficult to
confront. Old men stand up to shake my hand reveals how formality and
custom are used (again by men) to manage difficult
emotions. Whispers is an onomatopoeia that conjures the sound of
people talking around him, even behind his back, but hesitant when it
comes to admitting the truth. The mother, true to type, is permitted
to cough out her angry tearless sighs. She has been exhausted by her
outpouring of emotion: by contrast, the men keep theirs firmly shut away
inside. A detail that throws the men’s stoicism into sharp relief is the
mention of the baby who cooed and laughed in the pram.
The contrast of such unknowing, innocent behaviour with the reserved
and awkward behaviour of the adults only reinforces the formality of
their actions.

According to the poetic tradition of the turn, or volta, at a certain point

in a poem the focus shifts, the tone changes or a counterpoint is
presented. Mid-Term Break’s turn is disguised by form, hidden inside
the fifth stanza. After the description of mother’s sighs our attention is
taken away from the reactions of those gathered in the house and
placed onto the ambulance, there to deliver the body of the speaker’s
younger brother. At ten o’clock is the subtle marker used to make this
change. After this point, the poem homes in on the boy’s experience
only and we are with him through the terrible walk up the stairs, into the
room where his brother’s body is laid in state stanched (like the more
common ‘staunch,’ this word means to restrict the flow of blood; you can
read it to mean ‘cleaned’) and bandaged by nurses. Assonance plays a
part in this stanza: the letter A flows through the lines in all kinds of
words such as angry, ambulance arrived, stanched and bandaged.
Assonance helps manage the tension in the poem at this crucial
moment – the boy is only steps away from entering the room himself
and coming face to face with his brother after his awful accident.
 The
poem’s most powerful imagery is saved we stand alongside the boy at
his brother’s bedside.

Once he enters the site of revelation, the poem intensifies its use
of imagery. The evidence of his brother’s wound is described as
a poppy bruise, the vivid red colour that flashes into our minds when we
read poppy contrasts with the white images suggested by paler now,
stanched and bandaged and snowdrops (white flowers) and candles
soothed the bedside. Like the knelling bells, this use of language comes
from the older writer looking back on his childish persona. Look again at
the word ‘soothed.’ Flowers and candles are personified to have a
calming effect on the scene, and we are invited to compare the ritual
trappings of funerals with the formality of behaviour displayed by the
men earlier in the poem. The votive candles have a particularly calming
effect, bathing the scene in warmth despite the ‘cold’ setting and tone.
Perhaps Heaney wants us to think that the objects in the room, the ritual
‘embalming’ of the corpse – like the words and behaviour of the people
downstairs – are all bent to the same purpose: the dulling of grief in
order to allow men to cope with, and display stoicism in the face of, this
‘unmanly’ emotion.

The
repetition of ‘hands’ is a detail that helps us see the boy is being passed
from hand to hand, ushered towards the truth waiting at the end of the
poem.

The importance of ritual is echoed in the poem’s form. Heaney is a

traditional poet, and his poetry gestures towards pre-modern times. Mid-
Term Break is written in unrhymed tercets (a tercet is a group of three
lines) and Heaney employs stanzaic form to echo both the rituals
surrounding death and funerals, and to frame the procession by which
the boy is brought from his school to the bedside. Try breaking the
journey into stages, imagining him passing various thresholds along the
way: he leaves the college sick bay, passes through the porch into the
main house, and goes up to the room. Each stanza narrows and
focuses the boy’s journey until he reaches the bedside, at which point
the poem is at its most intimate: just the boy, his brother and us
watching from the outside. The repetition of hands is a nice detail
helping us to see that he is quite literally passed from hand-to-hand by
various adults. He is taken by his neighbour, to his father, through a
roomful of relatives and strangers (who shake his hand) to his mother
(who held my hand). Finally, he visits the bedside where he is alone.
The structure of this journey is like a mini ‘rites of passage’ story, taking
a child from a safe, protected world and exposing him to the truth and
danger of the adult world.

Opening the Poem

 Seamus Heaney wrote this poem as a reflection on the death of his infant brother,
Christopher, who died in a car accident in 1953 when Heaney was fourteen. His
comments on the accident can be read in the Responses page.
 He was at boarding school forty miles from home at the time his brother died.
 The title has multiple meanings. It refers to both an official and an unofficial school
break.
 The word knelling is often associated with death (as with the “knelling” of a funeral
bell) so this adds a morbid tone to the opening of the poem.
  The fact that he is picked up by his neighbours not his parents leads us to wonder
why his parents cannot pick him up.
 Heaney brings the reader with him as he has to walk into the house through the
porch to meet his father; “Big Jim Evans”; the baby in its pram; the old men
gathering in the living room; and finally his mother coughing out “angry tearless
sighs”, which show she was hiding how she really felt, perhaps for the sake of her
son.
 The baby does not realise what is happening.
 There is a contrast between the way the mother and the father react to the son’s
death. The mother is more angry than sad while the father is filled with tears.
 His feelings at the house when he gets there were those of embarrassment as he
was treated like a mature adult by old men standing to shake his hand.
 Heaney uses the snowdrops and candles to show how people need ceremony and
ritual to soothe the pain of losing a loved one.
 The poet’s brother died because he was hit by a car. We discover that it was a car
accident in the second-last line.
 Even though he never says how he feels, you get the sense that he is deeply
unhappy.
 In losing his four-year-old brother, Heaney also lost his own childhood innocence,
as he discovered the brutal reality of the world.
 The effect of the isolated last line is to focus on the tragedy of the boy’s death.
 This poem records his experience quite dispassionately; we know how other
people feel but not much of how he felt. Yet he remembers everything of that day.
 Heaney is in between the very young and the old. He is outside.
 Apart from the last line which reveals the brother’s age, the poem is written in 3-line
unrhymed stanzas.
 The poem has such a powerful effect because the emotions are so understated.
Heaney describes only what he sees, not commenting, never letting any feelings
reach the surface. His emotions are restrained.
Back to the Top

History of the Poem

Mid-Term Break was first published in the Spring issue of the Kilkenny Magazine in
1963. (Read Heaney’s comments on this in the Responses page.)

It next appeared in a small 16-page pamphlet called Eleven Poems,

published in November 1995 by Festival Publications of Queen’s University, Belfast.
This slim volume collects some of Heaney’s earliest poems. Ten of these eleven poems
were later published in his first book.
In May 1966, when Heaney was only 27, his first full-length collection, Death of
a Naturalist, was published by Faber and Faber. Mid-Term Break was one of thirty four
short poems in this award winning volume. It earned him the Somerset Maugham Award
and the Geoffrey Faber Prize. The celebrated Irish poet Austin Clarke, reviewing it on
Radio Eireann said that unlike most first books, this one is mature and certain in its
touch.”

The Chief Examiners Report on the Junior Certificate examination of 2003 stated that, in
the Foundation Level paper, the most frequently selected poem was Mid-Term Break.

On the last day of the last century (31st December 1999) The Irish
Times published a list of the 100 Favourite Irish Poems of all time. More than 3,500
readers of the paper had written or e-mailed their choices. Mid-Term Break was the third
poem on the list. Heaney had ten of his poems included on this list.

This poem describes a boy who has come home from boarding
school early because his brother has been in a fatal accident.

Stanza 1: The language in stanza one is very matter-of-

fact. ‘At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home’. This
shows that the boy has no idea what has happened yet. He
feels like he was waiting a long time in the college sick
bay ‘counting bells knelling classes to a close’. This creates a
very tense atmosphere

Stanza 2: The first thing he sees in the porch is his father

crying. We know he must be devastated as he usually
takes ‘funerals in his stride’. Even a man with a tough sounding
name like Big Jim Evans says that the what has happened is ‘a
hard blow’.

Stanza 3: There is a contrast to all of this sadness, when the

boy enters the house and ‘the baby cooed and laughed and
rocked the pram’ . The baby is innocent and does not know
what has happened. We sense how awkward the boy feels
when he says he was embarrassed when grown men
sympathised with him.

Stanza 4: There is a run on line between stanzas 4 and 5

which conveys the boys distress at seeing how upset his
mother is ‘as my mother held my hand in hers and coughed
out angry tearless sighs .’

Stanza 5: the speaker says ‘the corpse arrives’. We get the

feeling that he cannot accept that the body is that of his baby
brother.

Stanza 6: The tone changes the next morning when he goes

to see his brother laid out in the bedroom. The mood is
peaceful and the poet uses alliteration to convey this
‘snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside’. The next lines
are poignant , as we learn that this is the first time he has seen
his little brother in some time ‘I saw him now for the first time
in six weeks’ .
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 Stanza 7: He looks the same apart from a ‘poppy bruise’.

‘He lay in the four foot box as in his cot’ . This heart breaking
image is created with the effective use of a simile. A cot is a
place where an infant should sleep peacefully. The speakers
brother has taken his final everlasting rest.

The final line is perhaps the most tragic, building on the

previous simile, the poet uses alliteration when he tells us how
young the little boy was : ‘a four foot box, a foot for every
year’.
SHARE THIS:

Analysis of the Poem 'Mid-

Term Break' by Seamus
Heaney

ANDREW SPACEY




UPDATED:


NOV 8, 2023


Seamus Heaney
Gotfryd, Bernard from Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions); Canva

Seamus Heaney and a Summary of 'Mid-

Term Break'

The early poem 'Mid-Term Break' was written by Seamus Heaney

following the death of his young brother, killed when a car hit him in
1953. It is a poem that grows in stature, finally ending in an
unforgettable single-line image.

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"My poems almost always start in some kind of memory ..." Seamus
Heaney said, and this poem is no exception. He was only 14 years old
when the accident happened, but the poem captures the family funeral
atmosphere in a subtle and sensitive manner.
The reader is unsure at first just what might unfold; after all, the title
suggests that this might be a poem about a holiday, a chance to get
away from school work and relax. Instead, we're gradually taken into
the grieving world of the first-person speaker, and the seriousness of
the situation soon becomes clear.

Heaney uses his special insights to reveal an emotional scene -

remember, this was the patriarchal Ireland of the 1950s - one in which
grown men cry and others find it hard to take.

'Mid-Term Break'

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours 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.

Themes

Death

Family Grief

Rites of Passage

Analysis of the Poem

A poem with an ambiguous title, 'Mid-Term Break' appears on the page

as an orderly set of tercets, finished off with a single line, as if
underlining everything that has gone before. Perhaps the poet wanted
a neat, arranged form to control what could be a seriously upsetting
scenario.

So, 22 lines with an echo of traditional iambic pentameter in each

stanza, plus odd bits of occasional anapaests and spondees to reflect
the varying emotions at play.

Note the use of dashes, enjambment and other punctuation to slow

and pause proceedings or to let them flow, and the syntax is, as
 always with Heaney's early poems, worked in a formal conversational
fashion.

 There are two full end rhymes, at the end, clear/year, which is a kind of
closure on proceedings. Assonance is used throughout, helping to tie
things together - close/drove/home/blow/old ...
o'clock/rocked/coughed/box/knocked ... whilst alliteration occurs in the
second, twentieth and last lines - counting/classes/close ... four-foot/a
foot.
 The second line is interesting, as it contains both alliteration and
assonance, plus the combination of the hard c and silent k suggests a
confusion of sorts. Why is the speaker in the sick bay in the first place?
Knelling is a word more often associated with church funerals
(alternatives would have been tolling or peeling or ringing).
 Stanzas six and seven stand out - the syntax alters in stanza six to
meet the contrasting circumstances as the speaker enters the room
where the little body lies. He is metaphorically wearing the poppy as a
bruise. Note that the punctuation and enjambment play a particular
role in slowing everything down, carrying us on to the next stanza and
that final devastating line.

Stanzas 1–4

How does grief affect those family members and friends close to us? In
'Mid-Term Break', Seamus Heaney takes the reader right into the
bosom of the family and provides first-hand observations of people
present at home following the death of his young brother.

Interestingly, we don't know if this is a brother or not. It is a male, but

the speaker informs us only of the 'corpse' which is delivered by
ambulance.
From the start, there is a suggestion that something isn't quite right.
The speaker has to sit in a sick bay with little to do but listen to the
ominous sound of bells - the foretelling of doom? The word knelling
implies that the occasion is solemn.

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Analysis of Poem 'Death of a Naturalist' by

Seamus Heaney
 Analysis of Poem 'Follower' by Seamus
Heaney

Analysis of the Poem "Bogland" by Seamus

Heaney
This is a little bit morbid, a touch ironic, because the title tells of a
break, a holiday away from responsibility and formality. When we are
told the neighbours, and not family, are the ones taking him home, the
intrigue deepens.

Atmosphere and tension are building by the second stanza as we learn

of the father, the patriarch, being reduced to tears, and a family friend,
Big Jim Evans, affirming the difficulty of the occasion. Tough men are
showing emotion, which is something the speaker isn't used to.

Heaney softens the mood slightly by introducing us to a baby in the

third stanza, but this is countered when old men offer their hands to
shake. Again, you can picture the speaker, the eldest son, trying to
take it all in as 'sorry for your trouble' repeatedly hits home.

The eldest son is going through a rite of passage, in a sense; this

profoundly sad death in the family is forcing him to grow up, and he's
finding it understandably hard.

Stanzas 5–7

It's the mother who takes on some of the grief in the form of anger as
the speaker holds her hand in a room of strangers and prepares
himself for the arrival of the body 'stanched and bandaged. Compare
the role of father with mother in this respect, at opposite ends of the
grieving spectrum.

Heaney's use of "corpse" is clinical and a little cold, suggesting that the
speaker is too upset to mention the child's name. The next day,
however, he feels compelled to go upstairs to have one last personal
meeting.
Snowdrops are the first flowers to show in winter, bursting through the
cold earth, sparked by the increasing light. They are a symbol of hope -
even in the depths of darkness, life prevails. Candles are associated
with prayer. The use of the word soothed reflects the healing qualities
of the peaceful room where the body lies.

There is the dead child 'wearing' a bruise, which implies it's not a part
of him, a temporary thing. Poppies are linked to peace and are also a
source of opiates which ease pain. Because the car hit the boy directly
on the head, there are no unsightly scars; the boy reminds the speaker
of when he was a baby in his cot.

The last line is full of pathos, the four-foot box measuring out the life of
the victim in years. Note the full rhyming couplet which seals up the
poem, reminding us of how easy it is to die, from a single blow of a car
bumper, but how challenging becomes the grieving process that must
inevitably follow.

Sources

www.poetryfoundation.org

Being Alive, Bloodaxe, Neil Astley, 2004

www.academia.edu

© 2017 Andrew Spacey

"Mid-Term Break" by Seamus Heaney is an elegy exploring the

speaker's experience of returning home from school to find his younger
brother has died, focusing on the family's grief and the unsettling
reactions to the tragedy.
 Here's a more detailed analysis:

Themes:


Death and Grief:



The poem's central theme is the experience of death, particularly the death of a
child, and the profound grief it evokes in the family.



Family Dynamics:


The poem portrays the various ways family members react to the tragedy,
highlighting the breakdown of normal routines and the emergence of
unexpected behaviors.



Loss of Innocence:


The poem contrasts the speaker's childhood innocence with the harsh reality of
death, as the speaker is forced to confront the fragility of life.


The Unspoken:

The poem emphasizes the difficulty of finding words to express the enormity of
grief, with the speaker struggling to articulate his emotions.


Key Elements and Imagery:



The "Mid-Term Break" Title:



The title is ironic, as the expected holiday is replaced by the devastating news
of his brother's death, creating a sense of disruption and loss.



The Bells:


The "knelling" of the bells in the opening stanzas foreshadow the tragedy and
create a sense of foreboding and solemnity.



The Father's Grief:



The poem depicts the father's tears and the emotional breakdown of a normally
stoic figure, emphasizing the power of grief to shatter even the most hardened
individuals.



The Brother's Coffin:



The image of the brother in the coffin, described as "a four foot box, a foot for
every year," emphasizes the brevity of his life and the tragedy of his death.



The "Poppy Bruise":



The description of the bruise on the brother's temple as a "poppy bruise" is a

poignant image, evoking both the fragility of life and the beauty of nature
juxtaposed with death.



The Snowdrops and Candles:



The image of "snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside" creates a sense of
peace and tranquility, yet also serves as a reminder of the transience of life and
the inevitability of death.


 The Speaker's Awkwardness:

The speaker's discomfort and embarrassment in the face of the tragedy,
particularly the attention he receives, highlight the difficulty of expressing grief
and the awkwardness of social expectations in the face of loss.


Analysis of Mid-Term Break

Seamus Heaney’s Mid-Term Break is a poignant and deeply personal poem about the
death of his younger brother, Christopher, who died in a car accident at the age of four.
The poem explores themes of grief, family loss, and the contrast between childhood
innocence and harsh reality.

Key Themes:

Loss and Grief: The poem portrays how different family members process the
tragedy—his father cries, his mother is silent, and the speaker himself remains
detached until the final realization.




Contrast Between Life and Death: The baby’s laughter contrasts with the
somber mood of the funeral, highlighting the innocence of childhood against the
weight of death.




Coming of Age: The speaker experiences a moment of painful maturity as he

returns home from school to confront the reality of his brother’s death.




Restraint and Emotion: The poem’s understated tone makes the grief even more
powerful. Heaney avoids overt sentimentality, allowing the raw details to convey
the depth of loss.

Structure and Style:

 

The poem is written in a series of unrhymed three-line stanzas, except for the final
single-line stanza, which emphasizes the emotional weight of the brother’s young
age.




Heaney uses simple language and stark imagery, such as poppy bruise and four-
foot box, to make the scene more striking.




The tone is initially detached, with the speaker observing events as if from a
distance, but by the end, the grief fully settles in.