An Ulster-Scots Education Project Resource for Key Stage 4
GCSE English Literature
Units 8-13
Preparing for the Unseen Poem: Five Linked Units
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An Ulster-Scots Education Project Resource for GCSE English Literature
Preparing for the Unseen Poem: Five Linked Units
Introduction
The unseen poetry question on the exam paper is often the one students feel most anxious about.
It’s one thing to be tested on texts you’ve spent two years studying, but the unseen poem will, of
course, be one you’ve never met before.
However, there’s a lot to be positive about in relation to this question. By the time you have to
answer it, you’ll be skilled in the appreciation and analysis of poetry as you’ll already have
studied a complete anthology of texts by a variety of poets. The unseen question simply asks you
to apply your skills to a poem that’s new to you.
The units in this booklet have been designed to sharpen those skills even more by introducing
you to some poems you probably haven’t encountered before by writers from Ulster-Scots
backgrounds. You’ll have opportunities to practise identifying and commenting on the effects of
a wide range of devices, figures of speech and other aspects of poetry.
The units are as follows:

Unit 1: Subject and themes

Unit 2 Figures of speech, poetic devices and stimulation of the senses

Unit 3: Mood, Tone and Voice

Unit 4: Form – rhyme scheme, versification, rhythmical pattern, enjambment, end stopped
line.
Unit 5: Try it for yourself – an unseen poem with questions to guide you through the
analysis.
Two glossaries—one which explains the literary terms used and the other which gives the
meanings of any Ulster-Scots expressions.


Getting Started
Remember, you’ll have a good idea beforehand what the examiner is expecting of you, even
though the poem will be unfamiliar.
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The question will ask you to:

Write about the poem.

Describe what the poet writes about.

Explain how she/he uses language to express thoughts and feelings.

The answers which achieve the highest marks always include detailed discussion of the
poet’s use of language.
Unit 1: Subject and themes
Often people ask, ‘What if I don’t understand the poem?’ Try to overcome this by reading the
poem through carefully once and asking: Who seems to be speaking? To whom are they
speaking? What are they speaking about? Also highlight or underline any words or phrases that
you find striking for any reason. Then try to break the poem down into two main aspects:
Subject – what’s actually going on in the poem: the story, the event, the thought or experience it
deals with.
Themes – the issues the poet wants to explore, and wants you to think about.
Ask yourself

What is the poem about? Can you summarise it in two or three sentences?

What issue(s) does the poem make you aware of? Love, family life, poverty and so on?
Where and how are you made aware of these?

Be prepared for your understanding of subject and themes to develop and change as you
analyse the poem and think about it in detail.
Sample poem for you to try:
This poem was written by a woman to her son in the period 1914-18. It was the first entry in a
small book of poems. Read it carefully. What else can you work out about the situation the
speaker is describing? What would you say were the themes or issues that are relevant here?
To Niall
Since all my love is yours, take this book too,
And when you have read its pages through,
Turn for a while from your dread battle-place
To these still Ulster woods – to one old wood,
Where blue-bells bloom in May: and where we stood
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Together, listening to the cuckoo call,
By the dark lake, beyond the pine-trees tall;
Before the lips of war had seared your face.
Again the cuckoo calls and blue-bells grow
Under the beeches out in Portavoe:
And through the happy fields the children play;
Hush! Dim, against the sun you stand: you come
O lonely Shadow, seeking Peace and Home –
Instead of Ireland and her singing trees,
Beloved, I can only give you these
Songs, heard by you, on some glad yesterday.
Florence M. Wilson
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Unit 2: Figures of speech, poetic devices and stimulation of the senses
And Mary was a maiden fair,
With rosy cheeks and raven hair;
Whose teeth were white as ivory bone –
Whose eye was bright as diamond stone –
Whose breath was sweet as honey-cup,
From which the evening bee might sup.
From ‘Stormy Rathlin’ by Thomas Beggs
Simile and stimulation of the senses
Explain what a simile is:
Identify and quote two similes from the Thomas Beggs extract:
Quote some lines which:
a) help you to imagine what Mary looks like
b) make us aware that the poet is very close to her (or is imagining he is!). Think – scent and
taste!
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Explain how these lines make us aware of the speaker’s strong physical attraction to Mary.
Useful Tip
When reading over a poem for the first time it can be helpful to ask yourself –
‘Which of my senses are being stimulated here?’
That can help you to focus on the particular words and poetic devices that are creating the
stimulation.
Often poets try especially to stimulate your senses of sight and hearing.
Metaphor
Up! through the region of the storm,
The country of the hail;
Up where the feathery snows are born
The playground of the gale.
Up! where the deep-voiced thunders sing
The melodies of God –
Where snaky lightnings twist themselves
Along the tempest’s road!
But who shall stay thy rushing force?
What hand shall grasp the rein,
Arrest thy course, and bind thee down,
Wild steed, to earth again?
From ‘The Balloon’ by Barney Maglone
You’ll remember, of course, that a metaphor is a comparison which doesn’t use the words ‘like’
or ‘as’. In this extract the poet is comparing a balloon rising up through the air on a windy day to
a wildly galloping horse – the metaphor is contained in the expression ‘wild steed’ and is
developed in the reference to ‘the rein’, which is of course the long string by which the balloon is
normally held. But there are many other metaphors (or examples of metaphorical language) in
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this passage. Can you explain what is the comparison being made in each of the following
examples? Remember to say which of your senses they are stimulating.
‘the region of the storm, the country of the hail’
‘snaky lightnings twist themselves’
There is also an example of personification in the passage – a natural force is described as if it
has human qualities. Can you identify and quote it?
STOP! Remember, in your unseen poetry essay you need to do more than just spot and quote
examples of the poet using effects and techniques. Look again at the extract and try to explain
how the series of metaphors and other effects work together to make this a powerful piece of
descriptive poetry.
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Personification
Again cheerful spring does our burnies unbind
While winter, grim tyrant, retreats with a roar.
From ‘Epistle’ by Samuel Thomson
From their crevices saplings secure,
Look down on the woodman with scorn.
From ‘The Glen’ by James Orr
Both of these examples give a sense of personality and vitality to the natural world by using
personification. Can you explain what are the different characters given to spring and to winter
by Samuel Thomson, and also what he means when he says that spring ‘unbinds’ the
‘burnies’(streams)?
The second quotation, from James Orr’s poem ‘The Glen’, describes how the young trees in a
steep glen are growing in such awkward spots high up on the slopes that the woodcutter cannot
get near them to cut them down. Orr is suggesting the wildness of nature through personification
here and how it seems to resist man’s attempts to cultivate and use it. He implies that nature has a
mischievous and mocking character and that it is enjoying its victory. This image contributes to
a sense of exuberance that the rest of the poem also communicates.
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Unit 3: Mood, Tone and Voice
Mood
Think of music and how melody, rhythm, pitch and pace can work together to create an
atmosphere that is happy, melancholy, tense or exciting. Poets achieve these effects by being
inventive with language.
The mood of a piece of poetry is the atmosphere it creates, closely linked to its effect on the
reader – the feelings it gives you as you read it. The vocabulary chosen by the poet and the poetic
effects and devices she or he uses can create different moods. Let’s look at an example, which is
taken from ‘The Fairy Thorn’, a nineteenth century narrative poem about a strange disappearance
in the County Antrim countryside. In this stanza, four girls are entering a lonely woodland area.
Sound Effects
But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze
That drinks away the silence in echoless repose,
And dreamily the evening has stilled the haunted braes
And dreamier the gloaming grows.
From ‘The Fairy Thorn’ by Samuel Ferguson
Alliteration, assonance, sibilance, repetition.
The poetic devices related to sound that are used in the passage are listed below the quotation.
Can you quote an example of each from the stanza?
N.B. Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds; Sibilance – repeated ‘s’ sounds.
Sibilance
Alliteration
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Assonance
Repetition
Can you describe how this range of sound effects is being used to build up a particular mood and
say what you think that mood is? Do any of the words or phrases used in the verse also help to
create and reinforce that mood?
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Onomatopoeia is a further important sound effect in which sense or meaning and sound are
closely related. We’ll look at this in a further example a little later.
Tone
Think of tone as tone of voice, expressing the poet’s or the speaker’s attitude to the subject.
When someone is speaking in an angry, frightened, warning or cheerful tone, for example, we
are aware of it. Poets and the speakers or characters in their poems also speak in a variety of
tones. You should try to identify these, and also look out for any tonal shifts – changes in the
tone and how these are created through the vocabulary, devices or effects used.
Here are two stanzas from another poem by Florence M. Wilson, which is about a fisherman’s
experience of white water and high, rough seas on the North Coast near Rathlin Island (Rachra).
He describes this as an encounter with ‘the sea-folk’ – mermen and mermaids on white horses –
and reports that there was also a drowned body carried before them on the waves. The fisherman
feels that to have seen this is a bad omen for himself.
The Sea-Folk
I saw the sea-folk ride
Roun’ Rachra in the Dawn;
On their white leppin’ horses
Thunderin’ on.
I wisht they hadn’t looked my way,
So be I might forget,
For they tried to stove the boat on me,
An’ they tore my trawlin’-net.
Each wan wi’ a whippin’-weed
Lashed at his foamin’ horse;
An’ him who drove the hardest
Carried a drownded corse.
I closed my eyes as it went by,
Swingin’ through the brine,
But off the swirl o’ old Ceann Ban
I saw its wet hair shine.
Rachra— Rathlin Island; Ceann Ban— Kenbane Head on the North Antrim Coast.
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The tone here includes fear, horror and awe. Can you quote lines which express these attitudes,
together or separately? Where does horror seem dominant?
Voice
Voice is closely related to tone, but carries with it the idea of a speaker who has a particular
character, role or set of attitudes. The voice here is not the poet’s but belongs to the fisherman. It
reveals his background as well as his state of mind. He speaks using local names for the
landmarks (Rachra, Ceann Ban) and employs non-standard vocabulary (that is he doesn’t speak
in formal standard English): ‘roun’’, ‘leppin’’, ‘wan’, ‘wisht’, ‘drownded’.
What does this tell you about his background (upbringing, education)? Might this background
influence the interpretation he puts on the rough seas and the body in the water?
Onomatopoeia
The power of the fisherman’s description is given added force with the use of onomatopoeic
words. These include ‘thunderin’’, ‘whippin’’, ‘lashed’ and ‘swirl’. Can you say which letters are
particularly important in creating particular sound effects in each word? The first one is done for
you:
thunderin’
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Here the long ‘un’ immediately followed by the dull, hard ‘d’ sound creates the heavy, powerful,
rumbling noise of the waves as they fall.
Whippin’
lashed
swirl
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Unit 4: Form, Rhyme, Rhythm
Look again at the description of Mary which you read earlier:
And Mary was a maiden fair,
With rosy cheeks and raven hair;
Whose teeth were white as ivory bone –
Whose eye was bright as diamond stone –
Whose breath was sweet as honey-cup,
From which the evening bee might sup.
Beggs
Three features immediately stand out:
1. Iambic rhythm – if you read the passage aloud, tapping out the rhythmical pattern as you are
reading you’ll find it runs like this - a light stress, or emphasis, followed by a heavy stress in
each pair of syllables through every line. Here’s line one with the stressed syllables coloured red:
And Mary was a maiden fair
Can you do the next two lines marking in the stressed syllables?
With rosy cheeks and raven hair;
Whose teeth were white as ivory bone- (NB ‘ivory’ is sounded ‘iv’ry’)
The iambic rhythm is very common in poetry as it is close to natural speech rhythms. Here it is
unrelieved by any variation. There are other very regular aspects to the verse as well.
2. Rhyme scheme – it’s written in what are called rhyming couplets, or pairs in a pattern, that
could be represented by letters of the alphabet like this:
A
A
B
B
C
C
And so on.
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3. End-stopped lines — Each line is a unit of meaning that makes sense without requiring you
to read on to the next line. There are clear pauses marked in with commas or semi-colons at the
end of several lines.
This amount of regularity in pattern and form can often be effective. In the ‘Mary’ extract, for
example it helps to bring out further the speaker’s fixation on Mary, and to make the reader even
more aware of those lovely features of her face that we noted earlier. However, a poem that went
on in this way for more than a few lines would become very tedious to read, and so the meaning
would be lost. Poets who are good at their craft will try to use some variation in the construction
of their verse.
Rhyme Scheme/Verse Form
Let’s look again at the extract from ‘The Sea Folk’
The Sea-Folk
I saw the sea-folk ride
Roun’ Rachra in the Dawn;
On their white leppin’ horses
Thunderin’ on.
I wisht they hadn’t looked my way,
So be I might forget,
For they tried to stove the boat on me,
An’ they tore my trawlin’-net.
Each wan wi’ a whippin’-weed
Lashed at his foamin’ horse;
An’ him who drove the hardest
Carried a drownded corse.
I closed my eyes as it went by,
Swingin’ through the brine,
But off the swirl o’ old Ceann Ban
I saw its wet hair shine.
Using the letters of the alphabet system we can work out that the rhyme scheme follows this
pattern in both stanzas:
A
B
C
B
E
F
G
F
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Why do you think the poet has chosen to write in stanzas? Can you explain how the content (the
story) develops from one stanza to the next?
Rhythmical Pattern
Look at the first four lines of stanza two, here with the stressed syllables highlighted in red:
Each wan wi’ a whippin’ weed
Lashed at his foamin’ horse;
An him who drove the hardest
Carried a drownded corse.
While the basic rhythm is iambic, the poet has inverted the stress pattern at the beginning of lines
two and four so that emphasis falls on ‘lashed’ and ‘carried’. The lines also make use of
Enjambement – where the meaning runs on from one line to the next – here from one to two
and three to four. The combination of the run-on lines and the stress falling on the words ‘lashed’
and ‘carried’ helps to intensify the fear and horror in the fisherman’s tone – his description seems
to be coming out in a rush as he recalls the intense experience.
Can you suggest any other effects achieved by the variation in the rhythmical pattern, or the use
of run-on lines, here or elsewhere in the poem? Think about variation in length of line too. What,
for example, do you think is suggested by the very short line 4 in stanza one?
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Unit 5: Try it for yourself
Practice Makes Perfect
The final unit will give you the opportunity to try out for yourself what you have learned about
poetic form and techniques.
Here is an unseen poem with questions to guide you through the analysis. It is another from the
collection Florence Wilson wrote and dedicated to her son Niall. Once again it’s set in the Ulster
countryside and draws on local language and superstitions. First read it through carefully.
All Souls’ Eve
I have decked my fireside with the haws glinting red,
Left the half-door open, set the table spread
With brown bread of my baking, and cups of gold and blue;
We two will sit together as once we used to do.
I have said three prayers for you since dayli’gone;
That the moon be your lantern, and the stars glimmer on
The dark ways you wander, and no cold mists there
Draw their clinging fingers through your yellow hair.
I will hear your footsteps seven miles away,
Feet the mould has fettered in a house of clay;
I would walk on your road, but you’ll travel mine,
To see the red haws gleaming and the candles shine.
I have made the place gay with brown leaves and red,
Here the turf is flaring; here the board is spread.
God, who took you from me, show you to my sight!
Lest I turn away from you, you who walk to-night.
Florence
M. Wilson
Notes:
‘All Souls’ Eve’ – All Hallows Eve, or Hallowe’en, when there are many superstitions about the
dead being able to return for a brief time to the world of the living.
‘dayli’ gone’ – twilight; literally ‘daylight gone’, an Ulster-Scots word.
Now read the poem through again and make notes on the questions which follow here.
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Poetry Analysis Framework
You can try applying these questions to help you explore any poetry text:
1.
Which of your senses are stimulated? Quote/highlight the words and phrases which
stimulate your sense of sight etc.
2.
What is the subject? Who seems to be speaking? What are they speaking about? To whom
are they speaking?
3.
What is/are the theme(s)? What issues does the poet raise or want us to think about? Your
understanding of this may develop and change as you analyse the poem and think about it
in detail, so come back to this question again later.
4.
What can you identify of the poem’s techniques, literary devices, aspects of form—
including rhyme scheme and rhythmical pattern? How do these help in making you
aware of the feelings, ideas and issues in the poem? (Remember, very little credit is given
for ‘simile spotting’ and so on without discussion of the effects created!)
5.
What mood or atmosphere are you aware of in the poem? What words and techniques
make you aware of it? How does the atmosphere develop and change as the poem
continues?
6.
What do we learn about the speaker? Do you notice any tonal shifts (changes in tone) as
he/she speaks? (The poem may have a first person speaker, or may be in the voice of an
unidentified third person speaker/narrator.)
7.
How do you respond to the poem personally?
When you have finished making your notes try the following GCSE style question:
Write about ‘All Souls’ Eve’ by Florence M. Wilson. You should describe what the poet
writes about and how she uses language to convey the speaker’s thoughts and feelings.
For Further Reading
All the poems you have encountered in these units are by local writers from Ulster-Scots
backgrounds or communities. If you would like to read more of their work or to explore this
verse tradition further you will find copies of their and many other poets’ works digitised and
available on the following websites:
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/ulsterscotspoetry/
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/ulsterpoetry/index.html
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Glossary of Literary Terms
Assonance - The repetition of similar vowel sounds. echoless repose.
Alliteration - The repetition of consonants, usually at the beginnings of words. the gloaming
grows.
End-stopped lines - Lines of verse that end with a punctuation mark to show a break in the
grammatical structure and to indicate a pause when reading. And Mary was a maiden fair, / With
rosy cheeks and raven hair;
Enjambement - Also known as ‘run on lines’. Lines of verse in which the meaning runs on from
one to the next without a pause. But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze / That drinks away
their voices...
Metaphor - A comparison which does not use ‘like’ or as. Where snaky lightnings twist
themselves / Along the tempest’s road.
Metre/metrical pattern - The pattern of stressed (emphasised) and unstressed syllables in a line
of poetry which creates the rhythm of the line. The iambic rhythm is very common - that is a
rhythm in which one unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. In the following line
the stressed syllables are in bold. And cups of gold and blue. Trochaic rhythm has the opposite
pattern. In the following phrase a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable. Draw
their clinging fingers...
Mood - The atmosphere created in a poem which results from a combination of the imagery, the
words used, the rhythm, the pace of the lines and the subject being dealt with. The mood can be
gloomy, sad, cheerful, disturbing, dark, excited, and so on.
Onomatopoeia - Words and phrases in which meaning and sound are closely related, in which
the word mimics the sound. whippin’, lashed.
Personification - Personality, human qualities and emotions given to something not human.
While winter, grim tyrant, retreats with a roar.
Sibilance - The repetition of s or sh sounds. But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze...
Simile - A comparison which uses the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. Whose breath was sweet as honey
cup...
Tone - Very similar to tone of voice when speaking—when you read the poem you will have a
sense of whether the words express cheerfulness, anger, bitterness, weariness, and so on. Tone
gives us a sense of the poet’s attitude to his/her subject, or the attitude of the speaker in the
poem. Tonal shifts are variations in the tone that occur in the course of the poem.
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Glossary of Ulster-Scots Terms
burnies
small streams
drownded
drowned
dayli’gone
twilight (lit. daylight gone)
leppin’
leaping
wan
one
wisht
wished
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