Bells for John Whiteside's daughter

The elegies of Ransom (“Bells For John Whiteside’s Daughter”) and Meehan (“Child Burial”) both use different diction, imagery, and scheme to achieve each of its desired effects, which essentially is to lament the loss of a child. Both use ironic word choices to demonstrate the mourning of a lost child; at the same time, the authors use the formal elements of a poem to support the essence of their respective poems.
In Ransom’s “Bells For John Whiteside’s Daughter,” he uses an ironic choice of words to give meaning to the poem, the melancholic mourning of a loss child. In the first stanza, Ransome gives life to the dead child: “There was such speed in her little body;” however, in the next line, Ransome describes how the mourner was surprised by the death, which totally contrasted the child’s life: “And such lightness in her footfall.” The mourner was “astonished” with the death. Ransom further uses his choice of words to tell his audience how th...