What will your verse be?

               Familial love is the most profound and natural emotion among living beings. It’s not quantifiable but it can be express with the power of word. The poems “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “The Sick Child” by Robert Louis Stevenson are examples where people used poetry as a mean to nude their most sincere emotions of love. Further, by listening to the song “Dear Mama” by Tupac Shakur, we saw it shares the same theme with “The Sick Child” and “Those WinterSundays”. The poems “The Sick Child” and “Those Winter Sundays” and the song “Dear Mama” express love along with support and need while the authors use different tones and styles.

The poem “Those Winter Sunday” by Robert Hayden portrays an adult who is retracing his dad activities and attitude when he was still a kid. Robert explains all the extra work that his dad was committed to do for him that he used to neglect. Robert starts the poem saying, “Sundays too my father got up early” (Hayden 1) instill that his father wouldn’t take any break. Then at the end of the paragraph he said: “no one ever thanked him” (Hayden 5). Robert Hayden used this kind of irony throughout the entire poem. Whenever he explains how hard his dad worked he goes to mention how he has stayed indifferent, this is shown in this verse” Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well”.

Furthermore his dad also was strict with him, as a kid this wasn’t sign of love for him. He wrote: “I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic anger of that house” (5). But now that the author has grown up, he realizes how his dad loved him, he understand the love that he’s father was expressing through the hard work that he was doing for the family. And now in a tone of regret he wrote what did I know what did I know of love’s austere. See in this sentence Robert uses a repetition of word to accentuate to his feeling of regret.

This same scenario is sung on “Dear mama” by Tupac Shakur. The rapper now grown up is expressing his love and his appreciation to his mother in a tone of regret. Tupac starts to explain how he was a trouble boy. He constantly had beef with his mother and “breaking all the rules” (Shakur 6). This line tells more,” I reminisce on the stress I caused, it was hell hugging on my mama from a jail cell” (Shakur 11-12). But now the author realizes how his mother was doing the impossible the raised him. He wrote;” I finally understand for a woman it ain't easy trying to raise a man. He goes further to say “there is no way I can pay you back but the plan is to tell you that I understand” (19-20)

The rapper also talks about the support that he got from his mother; a kind of support that he wouldn’t get from anyone else but from a mother. In a state of deep regret he’s remembering how special this love that he has favored. He wrote, “Pour out some liquor and I reminsce, cause through the drama, I can always depend on my mama, and when it seems that I'm hopeless, you say the words that can get me back in focus.”(Verse 3,1-4). This psychological support in another word this love from his mother was so profound and so real that it seems to become a need for the author.

               The Sick Child” by Robert Louis Stevenson shares this same idea of support and need as the song “Dear Mama”. However, this play is melancholic and sad. The author, instead of telling stories, represents a dialogue between a mother and her sick child. The child felt the need to have her mother around him, asking her to “O Mother, lay your hand on my brow” (Stevenson 1). The setting of this poem makes it even more romantic because of the direct conversation of the two. The child is lying on his mother’s arm and she is whispering sweet words to comfort her sick kid. Line 5 and 6 tell more:” Fear not at all: the night is still. Nothing is here that means you ill” It appear clearly this kid did not encounter love’s austere and lonely offices”.

                In those two poems, “The Sick Child” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1913), “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden (1966) and the song “Dear Mama” by Tupac Shakur (1995) the authors embraced this emotion of familial love and expressed it in words as they feel it. While “Those Winter Sundays” and Dear Mama express love and appreciation in a tone of regret, “The Sick Child” in a tone of melancholy and romance shows the purest love between a mother and a child. Robert Hayden, Tupac Shakur and Robert Louis Stevenson have contributed their verse as members of the human race. What would your verse be?