Windy Nights
By Robert Louis Stevenson
Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
T
here are three poems in this passage. Read
each one to determine the topic of the poem.
Compare the poems. How are the topics the
same? How does the poet describe the topic?
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.
DID YOU
KNOW?
A stanza is a group of lines in a poem separated by a space.
These poems have rhymed stanzas. Find the rhymes at the end
of each line in “Windy Nights.” Poets often have rhyme schemes,
or patterns, for their rhyme. Write a capital letter A next to
the word set. Write another A next to the word at the end of
another line that rhymes with set. For each set of words that
rhyme, use a different letter. The first stanza in “Windy Nights” has
the pattern ABABCC. What is the pattern for the second stanza?
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Credits: © Linda Prater/Wilkinson Studios, Inc.
1
of
og
Thunder
From the Navajo tradition
By Carl Sandburg
The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.
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www.readinga-z.com
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
DID YOU
KNOW?
Figurative language uses words or phrases
that are used to mean something different
from their dictionary meaning. For example,
“It is a pea soup fog” does not mean that
you can eat the fog. It compares the
thickness of thick fog to pea soup. What
does the poet compare fog to in the poem?
Credits: © Linda Prater/Wilkinson Studios, Inc.
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