GRADE 9 POETRY
BOOKLET
TERM ONE
CONTENTS
1. Wind – Ted Hughes
2. THE sea – James Reeves
3. Snake – D.H. Lawrence
4. The tiger – William Blake
5. Last Lesson…afternoon - D.H. Lawrence
6. The lesson – EDWARD LUCIE-Smith
7. Timothy winters – CHARLES CAUSLEY
8. COWB OYS – JON STALLWORTHY
1. WIND – TED HUGHES
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guy rope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a blackBack gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
QUESTIONS:
Write down 3 examples of simile found in the poem.
(3)
Find one example of personification in stanza one.
(1)
Find one example of alliteration in stanza two.
(1)
Provide one example of personification found in stanza four. (1)
5. Explain why the speaker feels that the house is similar to a goblet. (2)
1.
2.
3.
4.
2. THE SEA – James reeves
The sea is a hungry dog,
Giant and grey.
He rolls on the beach all day.
With his clashing teeth and shaggy jaws
Hour upon hour he gnaws
The rumbling, tumbling stones,
And ‘Bones, bones, bones, bones!’
The giant sea-dog moans,
Licking his greasy paws.
5
And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy cloud,
He bounds to his feet and snuffs and sniffs,
Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs,
And howls and hollos long and loud.
10
But on quiet days in May or June,
When even the grasses on the dune
Play no more their reedy tune,
With his head between his paws
He lies on sandy shores,
So quiet, so quiet, he scarcely snores.
15
20
QUESTIONS
1. Write down the rhyme scheme in each stanza.
(2)
2. Compare the line lengths in stanzas 1 and 3. In stanza 1 there are
short/long/short lines, but in stanza 3 they are much the same length.
Why is this so, do you think?
(3)
3. The central metaphor in this poem compares the sea to a dog. In your own
words, explain how the poet supports this comparison in each stanza.
(3)
4. The mood of the sea is different in each stanza. Describe each mood by
choosing a suitable adjective from this list: sleepy; angry; playful; stormy;
calm; hungry.
(2)
5. Find an example of onomatopoeia in stanza 1.
(1)
6. What are the two main visual images in stanza 2?
(2)
7. Find an example of onomatopoeia in stanza 2.
(1)
8. Does the moon actually “rock” in stanza 2? Explain your answer.
(2)
3. SNAKE – D.H. Lawrence
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, if you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to
feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air,
so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice a dream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,
and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing
into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly
drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wallfront,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with
fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human
education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
QUESTIONS
1. Why does the poet decide to
stand and wait till the snake
has finished drinking? What
does this tell you about the
poet? (Notice that he uses
‘someone’ instead of
‘something’ for the snake.)(2)
2. The poet gives a vivid
description of the snake by
using suggestive expressions.
What picture of the snake do
you form on the basis of this
description?
(2)
3. How does the poet describe
the day and the atmosphere
when he saw the snake? (2)
4. Do you think the snake was
conscious of the poet’s
presence? How do you know?
(2)
5. The poet seems to be full of
admiration and respect for
the snake. Pick out at least
four expressions from the
poem that reflect these
emotions.
(4)
6. Quote 4 examples of simile in
this poem.
(4)
4. The Tiger – William blake
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
5
10
15
20
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
QUESTIONS:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Give the rhyme scheme used in the poem.
What does the tiger symbolise?
Why does the poem refer to the hammer and the anvil?
Comment on the use of alliteration in the words “burning bright”
and ‘frame thy fearful symmetry”.
5. Is the expression ‘burning bright” used literally or figuratively?
Give a reason for your answer.
6. The word “fire” is used twice in stanza 2. Explain the significance
of the repetition.
(2)
(2)
(2)
(3)
(2)
(2)