The title mid term break suggests a school holiday, but it is clear from the first line "I sat all morning in the college sick bay" that the poem is about the author and that all is not well. In the next line he sets the tone using alliteration to emphasise the funereal sound of the bells, "Counting bells knelling classes to a close." There is a feeling of apprehension and of time dragging as the stanza begins in the morning but by the third line it is two o'clock. We are given a bleak picture of his waiting to be taken home as he is not just hearing the bells but counting each one.

The second stanza begins to describe the journey into the house through the eyes of this child. The child notes his father crying as being unusual as "he had always taken funerals in...