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“Mid-Term Break” Introduction
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“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.
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“Mid-Term Break” Summary
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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.
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“Mid-Term Break” Themes
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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
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mid-Term Break”
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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.
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Lines 4-6
In the porch ...
... a hard blow.
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Lines 7-10
The baby cooed ...
... for my trouble'. -
Lines 11-13
Whispers informed strangers ...
... angry tearless sighs. -
Lines 14-15
At ten o'clock ...
... by the nurses. -
Lines 16-18
Next morning I ...
... in six weeks. -
Lines 18-22
Paler now, ...
... for every year.
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“Mid-Term Break” Symbols
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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”
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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”
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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”
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“Mid-Term Break” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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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.”
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Enjambment
Unlock all 269 words of this analysis of Enjambment in “Mid-Term Break,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Caesura
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Polysyndeton
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Diacope
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“Mid-Term Break” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- College
- Sick Bay
- Knelling
- In His Stride
- Pram
- Eldest
- Stanched
- Snowdrops
- Poppy
- Temple
- Four-foot box
- Gaudy
- Bumper
College-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “college”)
A boarding school, for high-school aged students.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mid-Term Break”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“Mid-Term Break” Speaker
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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.
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“Mid-Term Break” Setting
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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.
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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.
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More “Mid-Term Break” Resources
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External Resources
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Seamus Heaney's 10 Best Poems — A list of Heaney's 10 Best Poems from the Telegraph—offering a good introduction to his broader work.
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Heaney Restrospective — A critical appraisal of the poet's life and work, from Naomi Schalit.
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Seamus Heaney's Life — A detailed biography from the Poetry Foundation.
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Seamus Heaney Reads "Mid-Term Break" — The poet reads his own poem aloud for the Poetry Ireland Lunchtime Reading Series.
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Heaney's Family on Life with the Poet — In an article for the Guardian Newspaper, Seamus Heaney's family reflect on life with Heaney.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Seamus Heaney
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