Those winter Sundays By Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Mid-term break by Seamus Heaney Mid-term break is an elegy written by Seamus Heaney and is based upon a true story which happened to him in his childhood. Seamus is writing as an older man looking back to his past and the poem concerns the tragic loss of his younger brother. The title, “Mid-Term Break”, gives the reader, at first glance, the thought that it is about nothing but a normal school break, a happy time. However, only when the reader finishes the second line of the poem is one’s curiosity aroused. Throughout the poem, Seamus paints the picture in a chronological order, from event to event.
A Father’s Love The poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is a result of the speaker’s reflection on his past experiences with his father. Hayden shows all the little things the father did for his family and how the speaker took them for granted. Looking back, the speaker now realizes and understands what the father had really gone through for him. The descriptions Hayden uses express both directly and indirectly the idea of unseen love. Hayden goes into detailed explanations of examples of the father’s devoted love.
Your roof was lined with stationary flamethrowers – perpetually switched on – that were there on the flimsy excuse that they were ‘Christmas decorations.’ Your neighbours were too ecstatic with their belief that you were finally accepting Christmas to ever question it. The chimney was covered with tarp, glued tight. Ten minutes before you knew Santa would be making his appearance, you turned off the fireplace, piling the hot coals in a precarious heap, laden with oil. The doors, windows, and walls, were reinforced with dense steel sheets. A spirit could not make it through.
Follower and Digging both give a clear account of Heaney's feelings towards his father with particular emphasis on the poet's response to the physical labour of his father. Both poems capture the contrast between past and present, Heaney's life and that of his father and once again highlight the theme of change. The notion of transformation is effectively conveyed in the poems by the display of the father's and also Heaney's journey through life. Both poems create a clear picture of their lives that spans over several years and generations and that effectively condenses the happenings in that time. ‘Digging’ is very much like ‘Follower’, in the sense that it shows how the young Heaney looked up to his elders - in this case both father and grandfather.
The Chimney Sweeper William Blake The general mood of the poem enlisted is that of sad positivism, where the persona is seen to have accepted his fate as a chimney sweeper. There are hints of religious principles in the poem, reflecting the importance of the role of religion in the 19th-century society. The persona's sympathy for another character can be felt throughout the poem, and there are indistinct undertones of accusations present in the poem itself. The poet takes on a persona of a young child, who has been sold by his own father into apprenticeship at a very tender age. He tells of his experience and of the people he meets along the way in this fixed, inescapable and bleak future of his, and in the process matures spiritually.
The poem by Chidiock Tichborne is structured into three stanzas. Stanza one starts the theme of the poem which is continued throughout by the use of parallels and oppositions. This theme is bluntly stated in the opening line, ‘My prime of youth is but a froste of cares:’ (Tichborne, 1586). This clearly states that Tichborne is talking of how the youth of his life has come to it’s premature end, the whole poem deliberates on this point. There is opposition in the first line, as it defines that his youth is cold and hopeless while youth is usually thought of as energetic and full of hope due to it being the beginning of life.
"Mid-Term Break" is a very emotive poem in which Seamus Heaney reflects on the death of his little brother and explains what was going through his mind at that time. The poem's title suggests a holiday but this "break" does not happen for pleasant reasons. For most of the poem Heaney writes of people's differing reactions and at the end he is able to grieve honestly. My first opinion of this poem was that it would be a bright poem and a child’s thoughts and exaggerations of the time they get away from school. I first realised this was not the case as I read the first line, “I sat all morning in college sick bay” Immediately the line tells me that something is wrong as “sick bay” is were children usually end up when they are feeling unwell.
The ideal man provides for his family materially and is brave on the battlefield. Second, the unbalance plays a part in the lives of the clan members. For instance the main character in the novel, Okonkwo, is extremely focused on being super masculine and finds everything feminine less worthy, leaving him very unbalanced. This unbalance leads him to violate the feminine beliefs such as peace. For instance, during the “Week of Peace” Okonkwo came home to find that his second wife had not returned from her friend’s house in time to cook dinner.
Descriptive writing- my favorite place A voice yelling my name in such loud whisper caused me to jar out of a relaxing, and a light burning through my eyes. Weakly, I open my eyes to see my daddy standing in the doorway looking at my messy room. He told me that I need to get going and is 3:00 a.m. I grabbed my clothes and left. The total time I wonder why I get up this early to visit the rough outdoors.