The Poetry of Death: A Comparison of Hopkins's "Felix Randal" and Heaney's "Seeing the Sick" Anonymous College

In Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Felix Randal,” the speaker has different concerns and different ways of healing from the loss of someone than Seamus Heaney’s “Seeing the Sick.” Though both poems cover the same morbid concept, Hopkins’s poem focuses more on religious consolation in the first two stanzas and ends with a more poetic catharsis. Comparatively, Heaney’s poem chooses to look more through a poetic lens for understanding and making peace with death. Considering structure, “Felix Randal” is written in a composed Petrarchan form. The poem itself is romanticized self-expression and seems to touch upon the life of Felix, but mainly focus on the speaker himself. Heaney’s “Seeing the Sick” takes a more loose structure, broken up by the interjection of the speaker’s organic thoughts. It also considers more of the subject and the implications on Heaney’s whole family rather than simply himself.

In “Felix Randal,” The first stanza talks about who Felix Randal was and how everyone thought of him prior to getting his illnesses. He was a farrier, in charge of taking care of crafting and putting on horseshoes. The speaker himself seems rather alarmed and unprepared for the news of Felix Randal’s death as he asks, “O he is dead then?” As...