Home Burial And Mid-Term Break, By Seamus Heaney

“Home Burial” by Robert Frost and “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney are both poems that contain death of a child, pain, and grief. By the title of “Home Burial” it gives the reader an insight that someone has been buried. However, in the poem a couple suffers from the loss of their child. The husband has buried their child in the graveyard behind their house. Furthermore, it demonstrates how one disaster can lead to another when his relationship with his wife is unstable. “Mid-Term Break” focuses on the loss of the speaker’s younger brother. It gives an example of how life can be a rainbow at one moment, and when you least expect it life can rain on your parade by making it come to an end. The grieving process can be considered different when a younger person dies compared to an older person. Most would say that an older person who passes away has already lived their life, yet the pain it brings to family members is still difficult to deal with but may be easier to bare with because it is part of life. On the other hand, a child who dies at a young age has not yet lived their life or experienced anything. Therefore, it is a life changing experience that one may never overcome. Grieving the loss is a process for parents

This poem focuses on his brother’s death and the pain it brought to his parents. The speaker who is Seamus Heaney is the eldest brother in his family. He attended college and was away from home for a long time. On his way home from school during a mid-term break, his expectations of coming home to a perfect family reunion was taken away. His neighbors drove him home and he explains what he encountered was not what he expected. “I met my father crying.” (Seamus 4). On that day, the teenage boy found out that his younger brother was involved in an accident. He got the chance to see his brother for the first time in six weeks where he describes him as looking