.
“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Literary Terms
Define the following terms:
1. alliteration:
2. assonance
3. symbol
4. personification:
5. scansion or scanning:
Scan the following line:
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
Reading Skills: Paraphrasing
-Paraphrase the poem in the chart below. Restate the poem, line by line in your own words. --Identify any figures of
speech, and explain what is being compared with what.
Stanzas from the poem
Paraphrase
Figures of speech
Example- alliteration:
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls
Example of imagery:
(curlew: large, brownish shore-bird with
long legs)
Example- personification:
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white
hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Example of imagery:
(efface: wipe out; erase)
Example of alliteration:
The morning breaks; the steeds in the
stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
(Hostler: person who takes care of horses)
Example of imagery:
“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”
Poetry Analysis
Notes and Questions
Understanding and appreciating poetry is difficult for many students. The vocabulary, similes, metaphors, figurative
language, allusions, structure of the lines, and use of symbolism combine to create a challenge for students.
Part of the problem with understanding poetry is that most students don’t read it out loud. Poetry is meant to be
heard. A second problem with the understanding of poetry is that most students expect to understand the poem the first
time they read it. Many times after the first reading of a poem, students won’t understand it completely. They may “pick
up” the general idea and a few of the literary elements but a deeper analysis requires more readings.
Below is a list of questions that students may use to help analyze a poem.
Surface Level
You can develop an understanding of the surface level of a poem by asking several basic questions.
1. Who is the speaker or speakers?
2. Who are the characters in the poem?
3. What is the subject or situation in the poem?
4. What are the events in the poem?
Deeper Level
You can develop a deeper understanding of a poem by asking several questions about how the poem is written. This
requires that you look at both the structure and the content of the poem.
5. Is there a rhyme scheme: IF SO, WHAT IS IT?
6. How is the poem structured? Is it one stanza, multiple stanzas, a certain format? Identify and explain.
7. State at least 2 unfamiliar words and define them.
1.
2.
8. What style is the used in this poem? Formal, informal, conversational, dialect, etc.? Explain.
9. Are the sentences and lines in normal word order, inverted (inversion) word order, or both? Prove with
examples from the poem.
A. Normal word order
B. Inverted word order
10. What observation is the narrator making? (Explain.)
11. What is the narrator’s opinion of his observation?
Give at least 2 examples (if possible) of the figurative language used in the poem.
12. alliteration
13. assonance
14. consonance
15. personification
16. symbols- and what they represent
27. repetition
Application Level
Now is the time to apply what you learned in the surface level and deeper level. Take the information that you learned in
those two levels and apply it to the following questions.
18. What is the main idea the poet is trying to convey?
19. What is the narrator’s tone? Explain how you know.
20. What is the mood of the poem? Give examples of words that help convey the mood.
21. What is the theme of the poem? Explain and/or prove.
22. What lines most help you to understand the theme? Quote them and state line number.