ENGLISH TENEO

POEM NOTES
ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDY NOTES

Poetry:
 “The Weary Blues” – Langston Hughes
 “The Collar” – George Herbert
 “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” – Adrienne Rich
 “The Child that Was Shot Dead by Soldier in Nyanga” – Ingrid Jonker
 “The Author to her Book” – Anne Bradstreet
 “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” – John Donne
 “A Far Cry from Africa” – Derek Walcott
 “The Darkling Thrush” – Thomas Hardy
 “Weather Eye” – Isobel Dixon
 “To My Father who Died” – Dawn Garish

THE WEARY BLUES – LANGSTON HUGHES

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light 5
He did a lazy sway. . . .
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody. 10
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul. 15
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self. 20
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues 25
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.” 30
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead. 35

 “The Weary Blues” is a description of a man playing a sad, “syncopated” song on the
piano.

 The song is one of isolation and the singer’s decision to pack away his “troubles”.
However, as the song continues we find life is unable to satisfy the singer and he
wishes he was dead.

 THE POEM IS WRITTEN:

o free verse
o irregular rhyme scheme to imitate natural speech and music.
o Imitates the blues musical genre, which is synonymous with an expression of
anguish and melancholy.

 FORM
o Two stanzas with irregular line lengths

o No regular rhyme or rhythm.

o Echoes the format of traditional blues tunes showing a rejection of formal,
white/European techniques.

 THEME

o Music/Art as a transformer of pain and suffering for the listener.

o Music as a way of transforming pain to art/song – an exhausting process.

 MOOD

o Sorrow
o Melancholy

SYMBOLS

STARS

 Stars are traditional symbols of hope and guidance.

 When the speaker says that the "stars went out" as the blues singer walked home in
line 32, chat's a sign chat things aren't going well: the blues singer is traveling in the
dark, without the hope or guidance that the stars usually provide.

MOON

 Like the stars, the "moon" is a traditional symbol of hope-and of beauty. Poets often
appeal to the moon because it seems so distant from their struggles and suffering.
 The moon literally looks down on human problems. The moon thus often proves
reassuring, but the blues singer lacks that consolation: in line 32 the "moon" goes
out. In other words, the moon-and all the beauty and hope it symbolizes--disappears
from his life.
 This suggests some of the costs associated with his art. He channels black pain and
suffering, transforming it into beautiful music-but at a price. Doing so seriously
damages him, leaves him in a world that has no outlet, no escape, and no hope.
POEM ANALYSIS:
Anaphora

 Lines 19-20: creates emphasis on loneliness and isolation

Ceasura
("... sing, that old piano ...").

 accentuates the poem’s musicality : the parallel phrases, “that Negro sing,” and “that
old piano moan”.

Enjambment

 Lines 9-10, 12-13, 17-18: strengthens and imitates the song-like quality of a Blues
song in the poem

Metaphor

 Line 10: ‘piano moan with melody’ – piano notes seem to echo the passion and
sorrow of the singer
 Line 21: his resolution to “put ma troubles on the shelf” is thus potentially rebellious—
an announcement of resistance to American racism.

Simile

 The speaker describes him as a “musical fool.” The speaker is saying that he’s a fool
for his music (passionate about it, even drunk on it).
 Line 35: describes how the blues singer sleeps: “like a rock or a man that’s dead.”

Onomatopoeia

 the word “thump” sounds like the tapping foot

Symbols

 Stars are symbols of hope and guidance

 Moon is a symbol of hope and beauty. An observer of the human condition.

Punctuation

 Lines 10, 14, 16: Exclamation mark to express release and relief

Sound Devices

 Line 1-2: Alliteration – ‘d’ sounds, ‘r’ and ‘ck’ sounds

 Line 10: Alliteration (‘poor piano’, moan with melody) and
 Assonance (‘o’ sound)
 Links the music and the pain it expresses
 Lines 31-33: Assonant /oo/ sound in “tune,” “moon,” and “blues,” captures the echo.

Repetition

 Phrases and line repeated to create the idea of a song, the chorus or refrain
repeating is evident. Also highlights the notion of the pianist swaying to the music.
 Lines 25-29
THE COLLAR – GEORGE HERBERT

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;

I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store. 5
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine 10
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? 15
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute 20
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law, 25
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
He that forbears 30
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child! 35
And I replied My Lord

 thirty-six line poem

 speaker’s struggle for freedom
 written by Herbert in 1633
 he struggled with his own religious beliefs.
 does not conform to one particular rhyme scheme
 jumps from half or slant rhymes to full end rhymes.
 few moments that are more consistent in their patterns
o the final four lines of the poem which rhyme abab.
o Herbert chose this pattern, or lack of pattern, to mimic the chaos of his
speaker’s own thoughts.
 If one understands a bit about Herbert’s religious background, the title takes on a
second layer of meaning
o The word “collar” has immediate connotations of submission and control but it
also refers to the piece of clothing worn by a member of the clergy.

FORM AND STRUCTURE

 Lyrical poem – expresses emotions and feelings.

 Written in the first person.
 The poem is irregular in shape and form, thus representing the chaotic feelings the
speaker is experiencing.
 The rhythm and rhyme do not conform to any regular pattern, as if his raging
thoughts are untamable.
 The free verse also represents his desire for freedom from his collar, the restraints he
has imposed on himself and against which he is now rebelling. The form is thus part
of the meaning.

THEME
Rebellion against the constraints of religion and then submission
Theme

 Rebellion against the constraints of religion, and then submission.

Tone

 Rebellious
 Angry
 finally submissive.

Anger

 Line 17-28 changes to hope

Rhetorical Question

 Line 3: “What? shall I ever sigh and pine?"

 Line 9: "What I have lost with cordial fruit?"
 Line 13: "Is the year only lost to me?"
 Line 15: "No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?"

Anaphora

 Lines 11-12: "Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
 Before my tears did drown it." - emphasising his previous life- earlier times and what
he has lost
Apostrophe

 Lines 35-36: "Methought I heard one calling, Child!

And I replied My Lord."

 A figure of speech in which the poet addresses an absent person, an abstract idea,
or a thing.

Sound Devices

 Lines 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 15, 18, 31:

Alliteration

 "My lines and life are free, free as the road

 "Shall I be still in suit?"
 Repetition of the "l", "f" and "s" sounds
 "Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
 Before my tears did drown it."
 "No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?"
 "And thou hast hands."
 "To suit and serve his need"

Simile

 Lines 4-5: "My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store."

Metaphor

 Line 22: "Thy rope of sands,"

AUNT JENNIFER’S TIGERS – ADRIENNE RICH

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool 5
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. 10
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid

TO MY FATHER, WHO DIED – DAWN GARISH

On shimmering beaches you come to me

and sit in the caves of my sockets,
taking a long look out along the wash
to where the sea breathes white and ash
seasoned with fish and salt. 5
You are oblivious to views, cliffs
and gulls in flight, unless they relate
to where to cast, where to meditate.
Your eyes skim and skip, scanning
the churned water and the lure within 10
wanting to plunge into the rip where fish disperse
like coins scattered, catching light.
Your sperm immersed, scattered,
pearled within my mother’s cavern,
fastened on her blood muscle 15
some limpet days; then came the third daughter,
sea child, washed up like diviner’s shells
and other flotsam fragments on your shores,
fine lines cast by receding tides
upon your palms, now ash to the wind. 20
16
That place, that interface where the fish emerge
you have entered. I sit a while and watch
the surface play and try to understand
what moved you. I only see the view

 explores a number of feminist concerns.

 Aunt Jennifer contrasts strongly with the tigers who “prance” ... “proud and unafraid”
while she is trapped under the weight of her marriage and the dutiful role she is
expected to play in a male-dominated society.
 regular rhythm and rhyming couplets in this poem mirror
 the confinement and rigidity that Aunt Jennifer experiences in her life
 Just as the words need to comply with a set rhythm and rhyme scheme, Aunt
Jennifer is expected to comply with society’s expectations.

 The image of the tigers

o Strong
o Majestic
o Fearless
o Difficult to capture

contrasts strongly with

 Aunt Jennifer
 Her desire to be released from a patriarchal society is expressed, ironically, in
needlework.

FORM AND STRUCTURE

 The poem consists of three quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme.

SYMBOLISM

THE TIGERS

 Aunt Jennifer's innermost desires for freedom

o in a time when a woman requesting a divorce was likely extremely rare
and certainly frowned upon—are thus expressed through the tigers.

 They are symbols of the liberated, joyous state of being that evades Aunt
Jennifer.

 The tigers represent:

o freedom from man-made constraints (like marriage) in the tangible world
o unique freedom that no man or woman can hope to attain—that is,
freedom from death itself.

 The final lines emphasize that the tigers "will go on" even "When Aunt is dead."
 Since the tigers are inanimate, captured within a tapestry, they can theoretically
exist forever.
 As a symbol of immortality, they highlight the fact that even men—who might try
to rule the world through patriarchal institutions like marriage—are not all-
powerful. They are all fallible and none of them will exist forever.

THE WEDDING BAND:

 symbol of the institution of marriage and speaks to the poem's broader thematic
ideas surrounding marriage, gender, and power.
 The depiction of the ring as burdensome speaks to the argument that the power
dynamic of a traditional heterosexual marriage serves to oppress women.

o The way that the band is described in lines 7 and 8 highlights this

o as the band is described as sitting "heavily" on Aunt Jennifer's hand as if it's

weighing her down. It's also attributed with a "massive weight," a bit of hyperbole
that confirms the reader's suspicion that it's not the ring itself that burdens Aunt
Jennifer but what the ring represents—her marriage. The fact that it is Uncle's
wedding band affirms this interpretation, making it clear that the man holds the
power in the relationship, leaving Aunt Jennifer in the subservient role.

 The reference to the symbol of the wedding band in lines 9 and 10 further supports
this view.

o The phrase "ringed with ordeals she was mastered by" is a nod to the
previously mentioned ring. The use of the word "mastered" in this instance
again paints a picture of Aunt Jennifer as being in the subservient role, the
"slave" to the "master" Uncle.

POEM ANALYSIS:
Metaphor

 A metaphor is a comparison between two things that states one thing is another in
order to help explain an idea. Example: His heart of stone surprised me.
 The tigers are compared to a topaz – the colour would be the resemblance. It stands
out against the colour green. Like a topaz is precious, so too are the tigers.

Alliteration

 The repetition of consonant sounds in a verse line.

 Line 5 - Fingers fluttering
THE CHILD WHO WAS SHOT DEAD BY SOLDIERS IN NYANGA – INGRID
JONKER

The child is not dead

the child raises his fists against his mother
who screams Africa screams the smell
of freedom and heather
in the locations of the heart under siege 5
The child raises his fists against his father
in the march of the generations
who scream Africa scream the smell
of justice and blood
in the streets of his armed pride 10
The child is not dead
neither at Langa nor at Nyanga
nor at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station in Philippi
where he lies with a bullet in his head 15
The child is the shadow of the soldiers
on guard with guns saracens and batons
the child is present at all meetings and legislations
the child peeps through the windows of houses and into the
hearts of mothers
the child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is
everywhere 20
12
the child who became a man treks through all of Africa
the child who became a giant travels through the whole world
Without a pass
 reflects on the pass laws of the past in South Africa.
 The child was killed while on his way to the doctor with his mother.
 The senselessness of the child’s death is a result of the senselessness of apartheid
laws.
 translation from the original Afrikaans
 read by Nelson Mandela in his State of the Nation address in 1994.
 An irony is therefore created because its original language – that of an Afrikaans
woman contemplating the senselessness of the killing enforced by her own people –
was the language of the Afrikaans apartheid government.
 The repetition of “the child” throughout the poem not only emphasises the age and
innocence of the youth but parallels how many children were killed (time and time
again) because of apartheid laws.

FORM AND STRUCTURE

FORM

 This poem is known as a protest poem. It is protesting the strict apartheid pass laws
and the cry for freedom.
 The poem is written in free verse

STRUCTURE

 The poem consists of 5 stanzas.

 The first three stanzas have five lines
 The fourth has seven lines
 The fifth and final has only one line – emphasizes the main focus – freedom to move
 No punctuation

THEMES

 Draws a common idea that violence within a country destroys innocent members of
society, women & children, and damages the country and its future severely.
 This child's death has inspired others to take up the cause of freedom and given new
energy to the struggle against Apartheid.
 Protest poem against Apartheid.
Anaphora

 “The child” focuses our attention on the innocent, the senseless loss of life

Enjambment

 Run-on lines add to the idea of protests gathering momentum and achieving freedom

Passive voice

 Title – forces us to focus on the child

Metaphor

 Line 16: “The child is the shadow of the soldiers”

 The essence of the child follows/haunts the soldiers. They cannot escape the
senselessness of their actions.

Synesthesia

 a figure of speech: one sense is used to describe another. Contradictory senses.

Sound Device

 Line 15: alliteration “bullet through his brain”

 Repetition of "b" - a harsh sound that highlights the brutality of the actions
THE AUTHOR TO HER BOOK – ANNE BADSTREET

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,

Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,
Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge, 5
Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight; 10
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet, 15
Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find.
In this array ’mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.
In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; 20
And take thy way where yet thou art not known,
If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none:
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.
 autobiographical poem
 Bradstreet reflects on the 1650 publication of her collection, The Tenth Muse Lately
Sprung Up in America.
 The poem's speakerpersonifies her book of poetry
 addressing it as if it were her own child, calling it the 'offspring' of her brain.
 She does not, at first, seem to think highly of it, describing it as ill-formed, and she is
unhappy that 'friends,' (supposedly Woolbridge), took it from her to be published.
 She describes it as a child dressed in rags, unfit to be seen in public.
 However, maternal feelings prevail, and she tries to revise it but continues to find
fault.
 Finally, she concludes that the book is fit for popular consumption, but should remain
out of the hands of critics, who might not appreciate it.
 much of Bradstreet's early work seems anxious about attaining the standards of male
contemporaries.

FORM & STRUCTURE

 Does not contain any stanza divisions.

 It presents a long stanza depicting the conversation between the poet and her
recently written book.
 There are a total of 24 lines in the poem.
 The poet uses the closed couplet format in this poem. Each couplet rhymes as usual.
So, the rhyme scheme of the poem is AA BB CC and it goes on like this. As an
example, in the first couplet “brain” rhymes with “remain”, forming a perfect or formal
rhyme
 The poet uses some phrases in brackets acting like an aside.

POEM ANALYSIS
Theme

 Art
 Creativity

Tone

 Admiration
 love

Rhyme and structure

 From lines 1 - 10, the poem has consisted of simple rhyming couplets, lending a
predictability and self-assuredness even as the speaker disparages her own work.

Caesura

 Line 6: "Where errors were not lessened (all may judg)."

 The poet has made use of deliberate pause

Apostrophe

 Line 1: "Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,"

 The poet addresses an absent person, an abstract idea, or a thing

Sound Devices

Consonance

 Line 1: "Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,"

 Line 7-10:
o "At thy return my blushing was not small,
o My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
o I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
o Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight;"

Alliteration

 Line 20: "In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;"

Pun

 Lines 15-16
o "I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet," - feet

Extended Metaphor

 The author compares her book to a child. A

 We see signs of affection or love between the author and her book—or, mother and
child

Iambic pentameter

 She has used iambic pentameter in line 15

o "( I stretched | thy joynts | to make | thee ev- | en feet,) very well."
 In line 16 she has deliberately made the iambic pentameter clumsy to show that it is
‘hobbling’ rather that rolling off the tongue.
o "Yet still | thou run’st |more hob- | ling then | is meet;"
A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MEANING – JOHN DONNE

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove 15
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. 20
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
4
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.

 Metaphysical poem describing the temporary parting of two lovers.

 The speaker insists that this separation is unavoidable and that it is not a time for sorrow
or regret.
 In the speaker’s opinion, their souls will still be together even when they are physically
separated, and they will soon be reunited.
 Uses many complicated ideas and images (usually drawn from science and other
intellectual sources of knowledge).
 Iambic tetrameter (eight syllables in each line)
 alternate rhyme (an abab rhyme scheme)
 Conceits (comparisons that draw together deliberately dissimilar things) are also
integrated into everyday statements and speech patterns and these further develop the
complexity of discussion between lovers.

Metaphysical conceit:

 A conceit, simply put, is the comparison or bringing together of two things that are
usually dissimilar. In Elizabethan poetry, poets ultimately overused such
comparisons and they became clichéd.

 The metaphysical conceit refers to the poetry of the 17th century, especially that of
John Donne, who took this further and introduced even more unlikely comparisons,
such as a compass to describe true love (see lines 25–26).
 The metaphysical poets also used everyday language and speech patterns in their
poetry as well as all forms of knowledge – from science to commerce to law – to
inspire their poetic images and metaphors.

FORM
 Nine quatrains
 36 lines total
 No particular verse form
 Consistent in terms of the length and style of its stanzas
 Each stanza is grammatically complete, and all except the first conclude with an end-
stopped sentence.
 Straightforward pattern moving along with the development of a rhetorical argument.
 The simplicity of the poem's form removes possible distractions from the reader, and
places focus solely on the speaker's argument and central conceit.

METER

 Consistently iambic tetrameter

 There are some moments of deviation from this meter.

RHYME SCHEME

 Simple alternating rhyme scheme

 The first line of each stanza rhymes with the third, and the second line rhymes with
the fourth in the following pattern:
 ABAB
 Straightforward perfect rhymes, granting the poem a sense of rhythmic ease that
allows the speaker to draw focus to his argument and central conceit.

POEM ANALYSIS:
SIMILE

 Where Simile appears in the poem:

o Line 1: “As virtuous men pass mildly away, ”
o Line 24: “Like gold to airy thinness beat. ”
o Lines 25-26: “If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two; ”

CONCEIT
• Where Conceit appears in the poem:
o Lines 25-36: “If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two; /
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, if the other do. / And
though it in the center sit, / Yet when the other far doth roam, / It leans and
hearkens after it, / And grows erect, as that comes home. / Such wilt thou be to
me, who must, / Like th' other foot, obliquely run; / Thy firmness makes my circle
just, / And makes me end where I begun. ”

HYPERBOLE
• Where Hyperbole appears in the poem:
o Line 6: “tear-floods,” “sigh-tempests”

ALLITERATION
• Where Alliteration appears in the poem:
o Line 3: “some,” “sad,” “say”
o Line 4: “some say”
o Line 5: “melt, and make,” “no noise”
o Line 8: “laity our love”
o Line 13: “Dull sublunary lovers' love”
o Lines 14-15: “admit / Absence”
o Line 16: “Those things”
o Line 33: “me, who must”
o Line 35: “firmness makes my”
o Line 36: “makes me”

ENJAMBMENT
• Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
o Lines 7-8: “'Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the laity our love.”
o Lines 13-16: “Dull sublunary lovers' love / (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit /
Absence, because it doth remove / Those things which elemented it.”
o Lines 25-26: “If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two”
o Lines 27-28: “Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, if the
other do.”
o

APOSTROPHE
• This is a poem with a clear audience. The speaker is addressing a lover he is about
to leave behind for a journey. The main effect of the apostrophe in this poem is a
feeling of intimacy.
• Where Apostrophe appears in the poem:
o Line 5
o Lines 6-8
o Lines 17-20
o Lines 21-32
o Lines 27-28
o Lines 33-36
PERSONIFICATION
• Where Personifification appears in the poem:
o Line 31: “It leans and hearkens after it, ”

METAPHOR
• Where Metaphor appears in the poem:
o Line 5: “So let us melt, and make no noise, ”
o Lines 9-10: “Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, / Men reckon what it did,
and meant; ”
o Lines 11-12: “But trepidation of the spheres, / Though greater far, is innocent. ”
o Lines 25-36: “If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two; /
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, if the other do. / And
though it in the center sit, / Yet when the other far doth roam, / It leans and
hearkens after it, / And grows erect, as that comes home. / Such wilt thou be to
me, who must, / Like th' other foot, obliquely run; / Thy firmness makes my circle
just, / And makes me end where I begun. ”
A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA – DEREK WALCOTT

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt

Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries: 5
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews? 10
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read 15
As natural law, but upright man Seeks his
divinity by inflicting pain. Delirious as
these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread 20
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
11
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman. 25
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? 30
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

• explores the history of a specific uprising in Kenya, occupied by the British, in the
1950s.
• Certain members of the local Kikuyu tribe, known as Mau Mau fighters, fought a
violent 8-year long campaign against settlers, who they saw as illegal trespassers on
their land.
• the Kikuyu were the tribe that the Mau Mau, or Kenya Land and Freedom Army
(KLFA), came from. Rather than fighting the British army head-on, the Mau Mau
mostly engaged in surprise attacks at night, often targeting white settlers instead of
the army.

POEM ANALYSIS:
A DARKLING THRUSH – THOMAS HARDY

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

• Dates back to 31 December 1900

• shows the context of a new year and a whole new century. The speaker, who is
alone, sees nothing but desolation.
• However, amidst all the gloom, an old thrush bursts forth in beautiful song, and this
provides a small sense of hope.
• The use of regular rhythm and rhyme scheme provides a structured and lilting sense
of despair, while also linking to the consistency of nature itself.
• This mood is also portrayed using colours, metaphors and similes (often linking to
death and destruction), personification (of nature) and strong sound devices.

FORM
Ballad

RHYME SCHEME
Abab

METRE
Alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.

POEM ANALYSIS:
Themes
• Nature and the decline of human civilization
• Hope and renewal
• Despair and isolation
• Mood
• Gloomy and then hopeful, with a reversion to gloomy
Tone
• Serious
• tragic
WEATHER EYE – ISOBEL DIXON

In summer when the Christmas beetles

filled each day with thin brass shrilling,
heat would wake you, lapping at the sheet,
and drive you up and out into the glare
to find the mulberry's sweet shade
or watch ants marching underneath
the guava tree.
And in the house Mommy would start
the daily ritual, whipping curtains closed,
then shutters latched against the sun
and when you crept in, thirsty, from the
garden,
the house would be a cool, dark cave,
an enclave barricaded against light
and carpeted with shadow, still
except the kitchen where the door was open
to nasturtiums flaming at the steps
while on the stove the pressure cooker chugged
in tandem with the steamy day.
And in the evenings when the sun had settled
and crickets started silvering the night,
just home from school, smelling of chalk and sweat,
Daddy would do his part of it, the checking,
18
on the front verandah, of the scientific facts.
Then if the temperature had dropped enough
the stays were loosened and the house undressed
for night. Even the front door wide now
for the slightest breeze, a welcoming
of all the season's scents, the jasmine,
someone else's supper, and a
neighbour's voice -
out walking labradors, the only time of day
for it, this time of year. How well the world
was ordered then. These chill machines
don't do it half as true, the loving regulation
of the burning days. Somehow my judgment isn't quite
as sure when faced with weather-signs. Let me come home
to where you watch the skies and keep things right.

• Loving description of life in the summertime in a part of Africa.

• The speaker longs for the routines played out by her mother and father to deal with
the African temperatures.
• This was a time when the “world was ordered” with “loving regulation” – something
that is absent from her current life.
• The poem is characterised by natural imagery – the temperatures, flora and insects
of southern Africa.
• These images evoke the senses, allowing the reader to be part of the experience.
• This effect is reinforced with the use of “you” as if the reader is being addressed
directly.
• The use of “you” also provides a distance between the adult poet and her childhood
self, the speaker of the poem.
• The enjambment imitates the natural flow of the daily routines described.
• The speaker in the poem (an adult) is reminiscing about childhood
• The speaker lovingly recounts life in the summertime in a part of Africa.
• The sounds and smells of her childhood home are described, as well as the comfort
and love it gave her
• The speaker remembers familiar routines which are all part of a well-ordered and
safe world - when the “world was ordered” with “loving regulation” – something that is
absent from her current life
• The poem concludes with a reference to “weather signs” – which links to the title

FORM AND STRUCTURE

• Six stanzas are written in free verse with run-on lines giving the words a sense of
flowing.
• There is no regular rhyme scheme or rhythm.
POEM ANALYSIS
Theme
The ordered life of childhood

Mood
Nostalgic: a longing for or thinking fondly of a past time or condition or evocative of a longed-
for past time or condition

Sound Devices
Lines 1-2: consonance: “In summer when the Christmas beetles /
filled each day with thin brass shrilling”
Repetition of the ‘s’ sound.
Line 2: Onomatopoeia “shrilling”
Line 16: onomatopoeia: “Chugged” (a short dull sound, esp one that is rapidly repeated -
often associated with steam engines)
Line 2 assonance “filled each day with thin brass shrilling”
Repetition of the ‘I” sound” imitates the sound of the beetles
Line 8: alliteration “c” – “closed curtains”
Personification
Line 3: The heat is personified. It is described as a powerful person: wakes you/ drives you
out
Line 24: The house is personified as a woman undressing or being undressed

Metaphor
Line 11: “the house would be a cool, dark cave’”
Line 12: “carpeted with shadow”
Line 19: “silvering” – as the sun sets, the glow of the sun and the darkening sky reflect on
the shiny crickets

Run on lines / Enjambment

The enjambment (run-on lines) in the poem: imitates a natural flow to the routines
TO MY FATHER WHO DIED – DAWN GARISCH

To my father, who died (2006) - Dawn Garisch

On shimmering beaches you come to me
and sit in the caves of my sockets,
taking a long look out along the wash
to where the sea breathes white and ash

seasoned with fish and salt. 5

You are oblivious to views, cliffs
and gulls in flight, unless they relate
to where to cast, where to meditate.

Your eyes skim and skip, scanning

the churned water and the lure within 10
wanting to plunge into the rip where fish disperse
like coins scattered, catching light.

Your sperm immersed, scattered,

pearled within my mother’s cavern,
fastened on her blood muscle 15
some limpet days; then came the third daughter,

sea child, washed up like diviner’s shells

and other flotsam fragments on your shores,
fine lines cast by receding tides
upon your palms, now ash to the wind. 20
That place, that interface where the fish emerge
you have entered. I sit a while and watch
the surface play and try to understand
what moved you. I only see the view. 25

• Explores the link between family, place and memory.

• The speaker contemplates the sea, remembering what it meant to her father.
• While she recognises his appreciation of the sea, she can only “see the view” both of
the sea and of her father.
• This poem makes use of apostrophe.
• It addresses a deceased person directly.
• In this way, the speaker of the poem is able to express her feelings for her father and
it provides a vehicle to express what she may not have been able to say to him while
he was alive.
• The extensive use of personal pronouns highlights the intensity of the personal
reflection. The feelings of the speaker are unique (personal) to her.

FORM, STRUCTURE, RHYME AND METER

• Apostrophe - The poet is addressing her deceased father

• 6 stanzas with no formal rhythm or rhyme scheme
• Free verse

POEM ANALYSIS:
Themes
Father-daughter relationship.
Finding meaning in relationships

Mood
Puzzlement

Tone
Questioning