Poetry Notes
Much of this information can also be found on pages R104 – R124 in the literature book.
Part One – Rhythm
Term
Definition
Rhythm
Stressed syllable
Unstressed syllable
Foot
Iamb
Meter
Pentameter
Part Two – Rhymes
Rhyme
Rhyme Scheme
Internal Rhyme
Example
Part Three – Other Sound Devices
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Onomatopoeia
Part Four – Stanzas
Stanza
Couplets
Triplets/Tercet
Quatrains
Sestet
Octave
Part Five - Forms
Free Verse
Haiku
Line Count –
Syllable –
Sonnet
Line Count –
Meter –
Rhyme Scheme 1 –
Rhyme Scheme 2 –
Rhyme Scheme 3 –
Villanelle
Stanza Breakdown –
Meter Rhyme Scheme –
Repetition –
Label the different forms of poetry shown on this page.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be
By John Keats
the morning paper
When I have fears that I may cease to be
harbinger of good and ill
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
- - I step over it
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
By Dylan Thomas
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Never have relish in the faery power
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
"Sonnet LIV"
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
By Edmund Spenser
Of this World's theatre in which we stay,
My love like the Spectator idly sits,
Beholding me, that all the pageants play,
Disguising diversely my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in mirth like to a Comedy;
Soon after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I wail and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart;
But when I laugh, she mocks: and when I cry
She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.
What then can move her? If nor mirth nor moan,
She is no woman, but a senseless stone.
Second April
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are,--but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses; how such matters go
We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore
Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
Receives the Table's ruin through her door,
Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
Lets fall the colored book upon the floor.
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dream'd in a Dream
by Walt Whitman
I DREAM'D in a dream I saw a city
invincible to the attacks of the whole of the
rest of the earth,
I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of
robust love, it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the
men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.