In this poem we see many contrasts and parallel’s to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet Soliloquy “To be or not To be”. In both poems one of the most prominent and obvious things that you can see from it is that they both are an internal emotional struggle for both people with Hamlet deliberating whether he should kill himself or his uncle and the Poet deciding if life is worth living without his son.

In Addition, both the poem and play are written by fathers that have lost their sons with one choosing to immortalize him through the play for years/centuries to come and another expressing his deepest sadness and the heartbreak he feels without him here.