Simile Poetry Selections
“My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” by Robert Burns
My love is like a red red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melodie
That’ sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only love,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
Focus: Lyric Poem, Simile, Rhyme
1. Write the similes in the poem. Explain what comparison is being made for each simile.
2. What two comparisons does the speaker make in the first stanza?
3. What words in the last stanza show that the speaker is about to leave his love?
4. Where do you see hyperbole in the poem?
5. Do you consider the very musical sound of the poem an important part of its effect or a distraction? Explain your
answer.
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth pg. 568
Focus: Lyric Poem, Simile, Rhyme, Couplet, Personification
1. Write the similes in the poem. Explain what comparison is being made.
2. What as the speaker’s mood before he saw the daffodils? How do you know?
3. Find three examples of personification and explain what human characteristics are given to nonhuman things.
4. What is the speaker’s “inward eye”?
Simile Poetry
“Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes pg. 566
1. Write the similes in the poem. Explain what comparison is being made.
2. Why do you think Hughes included Harlem as the first line of his poem?
3. Do the images in the poem seem to be positive or negative? Explain.
4. How is the last line of the poem an implied metaphor? (In other words, the explosion of the dream is being compared to
another kind of explosion. What is it? Think about the title and question posed at the beginning of the poem.)
Implied Metaphor Poem
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost pg. 667
Focus: Implied Metaphor and Irony
1. Which emotion is indirectly compared to fire, desire or hate?
2. Do you think the comparison fits? Why or why not?
3. Which emotion is indirectly compared to ice, desire or hate?
4. How are the emotion and ice similar?
5. Considering the comparison between emotions and fire and ice, what does the speaker’s suggestion that the world will
end in either fire or ice suggest about the power of extreme emotion?
“Fog” by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
1. Do you think the comparison between the fog and a cat is
appropriate? Why?
2. What details help to create the image of the fog as a cat?
3. Why could this whole poem be considered an implied
metaphor?
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death;
Such waltzing was not easy.
5
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
10
15
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Which line(s) contains a simile?
What do you know about the speaker of the poem?
List positive images from the poem.
List negative images from the poem.
Consider the all of the images, what other childhood experience could the waltz (a type of dance) be being indirectly
compared to in the poem? Pay special attention to the third and fourth stanza.
Sound Device Poetry
“The Eagle” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson pg. 593
“Summer” by Walter Dean Myers pg. 592
1. For these poems complete the chart provided by your teacher.
2. After your class discussion of the chart:
a. Write and label examples of alliteration.
b. Write and label examples of assonance.
c. Write and label examples of onomatopoeia.
d. Write and label examples of consonance.
Haiku
Haiku by Basho
Within plum orchard,
sturdy oak takes no notice
of flowering blooms.
The moon glows the same:
it is the drifting cloud forms
make it seem to change.
Yellow rose petals
drop one-by-one in silence:
roar of waterfall.
Focus: Imagery, Syllable Patterns
1. Describe in detail the relationship that exists in each poem. In what ways are the three relationships similar?
2. Explain what human traits might be suggested by the first and second poems.
3. How are Basho’s poems typical of traditional haiku?
Copy the chart below for the haiku poems and “Hokku” by Wright
Auditory Images
Visual Images
Olfactory Images
Tactile Images
Gustative Images
Hokku Poems by Richard Wright
I am nobody
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away
Make up your mind snail!
You are half inside your house
And halfway out!
In the falling snow
A laughing boy holds out his palms
Until they are white
Keep straight down this block
Then turn right where you will find
A peach tree blooming
The spring lingers on
In the scent of a damp log
Rotting in the sun
Whose town did you leave
O wild and drowning spring rain
And where do you go?
The crow flew so fast
That he left his lonely caw
Behind in the fields
Focus: Imagery, Syllable patterns
1. What order or reason can you find in the arrangement of the poems?
2. In what ways are Wright’s poems like traditional haiku? How are they different?
3. Poets often use the seasons to suggest moods. What moods do you associate with each season? (Spring, Summer,
Autumn, and Winter)
Rhyme and Meter Poems
Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun*;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak,--yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks, treads on the ground;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
*dun- a shade of light brown
1. Write the rhyme scheme for this poem.
2. What two lines of this poem are a rhymed couplet?
3. Some consider this sonnet an anti-comparison, list three ways Shakespeare says his mistress lacks in comparison to some
other thing.
4. Does Shakespeare seem to idolize or have a false sense of his lover’s value? Why do you believe this?
5. Does Shakespeare seem to value his lover’s qualities? Why do you think this?
6. Who is “she” in line fourteen? And what is she guilty of doing?
7. Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter in this sonnet. Choose one line (not one of the lines your teacher used as an example),
copy the line, and mark the stressed and unstressed syllables.
“Sea Fever” by John Masefield
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face and a gray dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
Focus: Rhythm, Speaker, Imagery
1. In each stanza the speaker asks for several sea- related items. Name one item from each stanza.
2. From what he looks for at sea what can we assume about his present life?
3. Is the rhythm of “Sea Fever” regular or irregular?
4. How might the meter of the poem reflect the nature of the sea?
Poetry Breakdown Worksheet
Group Members: _________________________________
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Title of Poem: __________________________
Name of Poet: __________________________
Predominant Mood: ________________________________________________
Three Words or Phrases that Support This Mood: ___________________________________________
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Predominant Tone: ______________________________________________________
Three Words or Phrases that Support This Tone: ____________________________________________
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Two Visual Images: _________________________________________________________________
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One Auditory or Gustative (Taste) Image: ______________________________________________
One Tactile or Olfactory (Smell) Image: _______________________________________________
Two Themes Present in the Poem: _____________________________________________________
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Central Message in the Poem: _________________________________________________________
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One Example of Alliteration: __________________________________________________________
One Example of Onomatopoeia: ________________________________________________________
The Most Important Verse: line ______
Why is this the most important line? ______________________________________________________
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