Question by Jessie: How is tone used in the poems The Lesson and Lament?
It’s my school question and this is how it goes exactly. In two or three paragraphs discuss how the poets, in The Lesson and Lament, have created and used tone to show what the speakers have learned about life as a result of their experiences with death.

The Lesson:
“Your father’s gone,” my bald headmaster said.
His shiny dome and brown tobacco jar
Splintered at once in tears. It wasn’t grief.
I cried for knowledge which was bitterer
Than any grief. For there and then I knew
That grief has uses – that a father dead
Could bind the bully’s fist a week or two;
And then I cried for shame, then for relief.

I was a month past ten when I learnt this:
I still remember how the noise was stilled
in school-assembly when my grief came in.
Some goldfish in a bowl quietly sculled
Around their shining prison on its shelf.
They were indifferent. All the other eyes
Were turned towards me. Somewhere in myself
Pride, like a goldfish, flashed a sudden fin.

Lament:
Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I’ll make you little jackets;
I’ll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There’ll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.

Thanks for any help.

Best answer:

Answer by PANDORA ???????
“The Lesson” by Edward Lucie-Smith

While it is indeed a poem about grief, at second glance it is also a poem about the loss of innocence, the cruelty of children, and the desire for pride and attention.

I love the way grief is personified. First, we see him ashamed for not grieving; his first thought is that he will be exempt from bullying for a few weeks. In the second paragraph, he explains how his “grief came in”, almost as if it had walked into the assembly hall like a person. Once again, grief is overshadowed, but this time by pride.
@ Read more
http://talltalesandtumbleweed.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/poetry-the-lesson-by-edward-lucie-smith/

Lament by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Lament,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, seems to be the address of a mother to her children, discussing the recent death of their father.
The mother gives two seemingly contradictory pieces…
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-theme-lament-by-edna-st-vincent-millay-232631

The tone in “lament” is very sombre. Millay is writing about the death of a woman’s husband and how the wife feels that “Life must go on”. (21) although she has forgotten just why. The wife is trying to forget about her husbands death: “and the dead be forgotten” (16). The tone of (since feeling is first” is a happy tone. A man is telling his girlfriend to enjoy life and stop being so serious.
@ Read more
http://www.essaycoursework.com/coursework/contras-of-millays-lament-and-cummings-since-feeling-is-.php
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