This guide is written for students and teachers who are preparing for GCSE exams in English literature. It contains detailed studies of all the poems in the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank of the AQA Anthology, which is a set text for the AQA's GCSE syllabuses for English and English Literature Specification A, from the 2004 exam onwards. For a general introduction to poetry in the Anthology with extensive guidance for students and teachers, then please see the Introduction to the Anthology by clicking on the link below.

• Go the Introduction to poetry in the AQA Anthology

On this page I use red type for emphasis. Brown type is used where italics would appear in print (in this screen font, italic looks like this, and is unkind on most readers). Headings have their own hierarchical logic, too:

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English literature - poetry (audio files)

You may like to listen to audio versions of the poems in the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank. I recorded the mp3 files, using Audacity. The Real Media files were converted from the mp3 files using Helix Producer Basic. To play these files you will need a media player such as RealOne Player or Windows Media Player. You are welcome to edit the files and add your own FX. If you have a slow connection the files may take some time to download or open.

• Open Ben Jonson - On My First Sonne mp3 | Real Media
• Open William Blake - The Little Boy Lost mp3 | Real Media
• Open William Blake - The Little Boy Found mp3 | Real Media
• Open Chidiock Tichborne - Elegy mp3 | Real Media
• Open Thomas Hardy - The Man He Killed mp3 | Real Media
• Open Walt Whitman - Patrolling Barnegat mp3 | Real Media
• Open William Shakespeare - Sonnet 130 mp3 | Real Media
• Open Robert Browning - My Last Duchess mp3 | Real Media
• Open Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ulysses mp3 | Real Media
• Open Oliver Goldsmith - The Village Schoolmaster mp3 | Real Media
• Open Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Eagle mp3 | Real Media
• Open Gerard Manley Hopkins - Inversnaid mp3 | Real Media

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Ben Jonson: On my first Sonne

About the poet

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was an actor, playwright and a poet. He wrote his plays around the same time as Shakespeare, whom he outlived. (According to an eccentric and almost certainly false theory, someone else wrote Shakespeare's plays - and Jonson is the one of the chief suspects, along with Francis Bacon.) In his own time, Jonson was more highly regarded than Shakespeare. In 1598 he was convicted of murdering a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, but escaped the hangman by claiming benefit of clergy (he proved he was in holy orders, and so not liable to trial in the ordinary courts). His work is closer in style to the classical dramatists of the ancient world. He published two collections of poems and translations.

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About the poem

The poem records and laments (expresses sorrow for) the death of the poet's first son. We call such poems elegies or describe them as elegiac. Jonson contrasts his feelings of sorrow with what he thinks he ought to feel - happiness that his son is in a better place.

The death of a child still has great power to move us - Seamus Heaney records a similar experience in Mid-Term Break. It would have been a far more common event in 17th century England, where childhood illnesses were often fatal. The modern reader should also be aware of Jonson's Christian faith - he has no doubt that his son is really in a “state" we should envy, in God's keeping. Sometimes poets write in the first person (writing "I") but take on the identity of an imagined speaker (as Yeats does in The Song of the Old Mother and Browning does in My Last Duchess). Here we can be sure that Jonson is speaking for and as himself.

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The poem in detail

Jonson writes as if talking to his son - and as if he assumes that the boy can hear or read his words. He calls him the child of his "right hand" both to suggest the boy's great worth and also the fact that he would have been the writer's heir (the image comes from the Bible - it reflects ancient cultures and the way Jesus is shown as sitting at God's right hand).

The poet sees the boy's death as caused by his (the father's, not the boy's) sin - in loving the child too much - an idea that returns at the end of the poem. He sees the boy's life also in terms of a loan, which he has had to repay, after seven years, on the day set for this ("the just day"). This extended metaphor expresses the idea that all people really belong to God and are permitted to spend time in this world.

Jonson looks at the contradiction (or paradox) that we "lament" (cry over) something we should really envy - escaping the hardships of life and the misery of ageing. The writer suggests that "his best piece of poetry" (the best thing he has ever made, that is) is his son. Remembering his sin (of loving too much) he now expresses the hope or wish that from now on, whatever he loves, he will not love it "too much".

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The poet's method

The poem uses the line that Shakespeare, Jonson and others rely on for most of the dialogue in their plays (the technical name is the iambic pentameter - as it has five [Latin penta] poetic "feet", each of which has two syllables, of which the second [usually] is stressed). Jonson arranges the lines in rhyming pairs, which we call couplets.

The poem is written in the form of an address to the dead child - but really shows us Jonson's own meditations. The short lyric contains one striking metaphor - that of the boy's being "lent" for "seven years", and paid back "on the just day". (When the poet develops an image in this way, we may call it an extended metaphor.)

The last two lines are memorable - a quite complex idea is packed neatly into two rhyming lines, an effect we call an epigram. (The couplet is at the same time both epigram and epitaph!)

A note on the text

Unlike the poems by Blake and Whitman, the text here has not been changed to modern standard UK English spelling. It also uses some words that are no longer common - such as "tho" ("=thou") for "you". You might find it helpful to "translate" or update the poem, so that you understand it more easily.

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Responding to the poem

What do we say when sad things happen? Compare this poem to other poems or songs written to mark the death of some loved person - you could use Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break or examples from outside the Anthology like Elton John's and Bernie Taupin's song Candle in the Wind (this exists in two versions - one written in 1973 for Marilyn Monroe, and a more famous version re-written in 1997 for Princess Diana).

Where do our loved ones go? Despite supposed falling attendance in some places of worship, most people in the UK, when asked, say that they believe in some kind of God or spiritual existence. When people die, we often find that we do believe, or want to believe, that death is not the end. What is your belief about such things? Say how far you agree with the ideas that Ben Jonson has about what has happened to his son.

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Writing your own elegies

Few of us can write things that are good enough to be published, and that express universal or general experiences. But it may be important for our own private grief to put our feelings down on paper. If you have had a very sad experience - it may be a loss or separation, the death of a pet or something as serious as the death of a friend or relative - then you might wish to write your own elegy in prose or verse. You must decide whether you want to show it to anyone else. (A teacher who asked students to write in this way would not be so insensitive as to read out or display the results, unless the writer wanted this to happen.)

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Parents and children

This poem is very much written from the viewpoint of the father. Students in schools will all be someone's child, but most will not have your own children yet.

• Does this affect the way we read the poem?
• Do you see it from the poet's point of view, or identify with the child who has died?

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William Butler Yeats: The Song of the Old Mother

About the poet

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, as well as being very active in politics and culture, and a student of magic and mythology. He founded Dublin's Abbey Theatre and became a senator of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1928. In 1923, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His poetry explores Irish mythology and history, classical civilization and modern culture and politics from both public and personal viewpoints.

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About the poem

The Song of the Old Mother comes from The Wind among the Reeds, published in 1899. The date of its composition is unknown, but those in the collection for which we have dates all come from the period 1892-95. It is among the very simplest of all Yeats' poems, and quite easy to understand. Yeats himself (in Autobiographies) describes it as "an old woman complaining of the idleness of the young".

The poem is a simple monologue in rhyme - an old woman describes her daily routine and contrasts it with the easy time that young people have. She gets up at dawn to light the fire, wash, prepare food and sweep up. Meanwhile the young people sleep on and pass their day "in idleness". More than a century later, few old people in the west will live quite such hard lives - but the poem is still an accurate portrait of the lives of poor old people in much of the world.

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The poem in detail

The poem starts with the old mother's telling how she starts her day at dawn - her first job is to light the fire (necessary, even in summer, for the rest of her jobs). She kneels down and blows to get it started - in 19th century Ireland this would probably be a slow-burning peat fire. The next three jobs are scrubbing (using water heated over the fire, perhaps), baking (making the staple food, bread) and then sweeping up. (Can you see why the four tasks should be in this order?) By the time the work is done, the stars are coming out again - "beginning to blink and peep".

The young people meanwhile are able to "lie long", dreaming of "matching" ribbons on their clothes and in their hair. Not only are they lazy, but they get upset if the wind disturbs their hair slightly. The poem ends with the image of the fire's going cold. This may be a metaphor for the loss of energy that comes with old age. It is certainly a reminder of how the next day will start - and every other day.

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The poet's method

Like many of the poems in this collection, The Song of the Old Mother is in rhyming pairs of lines. The metre here is of the kind called anapaestic (two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed one) - you will find this metre in Browning's The Laboratory and Hopkins' Inversnaid. Yeats does not end every line with a full anapaest, but sometimes uses an iambic foot - this give one less unstressed syllable but the last syllable is still stressed.

The Old Mother uses a simple and familiar vocabulary, naming common household chores.

Like the speaker in Hardy's The Man He Killed (and unlike the speaker in My Last Duchess) this is not a specific and named or unique individual. Rather she may represent, in some way, all old women in all times and places.

The last but one (penultimate) line contains what is almost a proverb - at the least it is presented as a general or universal truth:

"I must work because I am old"

You might like to think about whether this is, or ever has been, generally true.

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Responding to the poem

Ask an expert

Show the poem to a person who is a lot older than you - perhaps a grandparent or neighbour - and ask him or her to tell you more about any of the chores that they also had to do.

Is it still true?

Perhaps the nature of the tasks has changed - but is it still true (was it ever true) that old people have a harder life than the young?

Rewriting the song

You might like to try writing different versions of, or responses to, the song - perhaps in the same style or as prose accounts. Some possibilities would be:

• the song of the lazy teenager
• The Song of the Old Mother (21st century style)
• the song of the single parent
• the song of the yuppie commuter (the song of the gridlocked driver?)

Perhaps you could choose your own - either a typical representative person (as in Yeats' poem) or perhaps a comic stereotype.

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William Wordsworth: The Affliction of Margaret

About the poet

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is arguably the most popular and famous of all English poets. As a young man, he had quite radical ideas about political change - and he travelled to see the effects of the revolution in France - of which he wrote

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive".

With his good friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he published, in 1798, a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads (in 1800, they published a second volume). In some ways, these poems mark the beginning in England of what we now call the Romantic Movement. The Preface, written by Wordsworth, has come to be seen as one of the most important explanations of poetry in English literature. In 1805 Wordsworth published his masterpiece, the long autobiographical poem, The Prelude, subtitled Growth of a Poet's Mind. Wordsworth is strongly linked to the Lake District, where he grew up, and later settled. He helped introduce to Britain a love of the outdoors and of wild places. Wordsworth writes about man in relation to the natural world, and about simple or rustic people. He suffers from being strongly linked to gift shops and the heritage industry - so that his poems appear on tea towels, biscuit tins and postcards - and from the reputation of one poem (Daffodils) that begins "I wandered lonely as a cloud..."

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About the poem

The Affliction of Margaret was composed some time between 1801 and 1804 (which Wordsworth gives as the date on the manuscript). It was published in 1807. In his own arrangement of his poems, Wordsworth includes it among "Poems founded on the affections". The poem is similar to a longer piece in Volume Two of the Lyrical Ballads, called Michael, and also to the first half of Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son. (Luke 15.11-32). In a way, the poem's subject is one that is still very relevant to parents - it is about a boy who has left home, but lost contact with his mother. She has not heard from him for seven years, and worries about what has happened to him - her only child. She does not say that she is a single parent in so many words, but she never mentions the boy's father and says finally that she has "no other earthly friend" - suggesting either that she does not see the father now, or that he is dead.

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The poem in detail

This is a very long poem and there is not space here to look at everything. The title and the fact that she is a mother make it clear that the speaker in this poem is not the poet, but an imagined character. She begins by speaking to the missing son, asking him what he is doing and where he is. Having mentioned the length of his absence (seven years), she describes what a model child he was and thinks about how, in the past, she used to worry that he was neglecting her. Now she thinks either that he has been unsuccessful and is ashamed to come home or is lost in a prison or far-off desert or drowned in the "Deep". If the boy is dead, then thinks Margaret, it cannot be true that ghosts bring back messages to the living, for she would have had "sight" of him. She ends the poem, as she began it, with a request to the boy to return - or send some news to set her mind at rest.

Margaret has a first name - but we know no more details of her, nor do we know the son's name. Neither has any very clear individual qualities - except that the mother says her son was worthy, good looking, noble and innocent. (We are not sure if she exaggerates out of pride, but she seems sincere.) She seems to stand for all mothers everywhere who have lost touch with their children.

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The poet's method

This is quite a long poem with its eleven stanzas - though not by Wordsworth's standards. Like most of the Lyrical Ballads, it is written in a regular, but simple metre with a basic rhyme scheme (ABABCCC). Wordsworth writes in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that he has tried to avoid using a special language of poetry (usually called "poetic diction" - for an example, you could look at Oliver Goldmsith's portrait of The Village Schoolmaster) and tried to use "the very language of men" - that is, the vocabulary and style of everyday speech. The modern reader may find that the style is still quite literary - Wordsworth does not use dialect words or abbreviations (as Thomas Hardy does in The Man He Killed). But mostly The Affliction of Margaret is clear and direct. The effect of the basic vocabulary and the simple rhyme can be almost like a nursery-rhyme - especially in the last three lines of each verse, where the rhyme sounds are unavoidable.

Wordsworth is not a very economical writer here - in the way that Ben Jonson is in On My First Sonne. Instead of packing an idea tightly into an epigrammatic couplet, he tends to spell things out - so rather than just write "humbled", Wordsworth explains what this means "poor/Hopeless of honour and of gain".

In some other poems Wordsworth likes to let the lines run on, but when he uses simple rhyme schemes, as here, he is more likely to end stop the lines. Some lines here run on (see if you can find which ones) but most have a punctuation mark that requires the reader to pause or stop.

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Responding to the poem

Another earthly friend

If Margaret did have an "earthly friend", what might this person say to her to give her comfort or reassurance about her son and her concern for him? Should she hold out hope after seven years, or accept that the boy is gone for good?

Sorting out Margaret's hopes and fears

Working through the poem, try to find all the different things that Margaret says may have happened to her son - you may find that she repeats some. As you go, note them down. When you have finished, organize them into a list. In each case,

• write down her hope or fear, as far as possible in your own words;
• state what are her reasons (if she has any), or note that she has no reason for what she thinks, and finally,
• say how far you think this idea of hers is likely to be true.

The very language of men

Wordsworth has tried to write poetry that resembles the language of everyday speech - or "the very language of men". Do you think, in The Affliction of Margaret, that he succeeds? Pick out lines or phrases or even single words and punctuation marks that make the poem more or less representative of how people speak today, or how you think they may have spoken some two hundred years ago, when the poem was written.

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William Blake: The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found

About the poet

William Blake was born on 28 November 1757, and died on 12 August 1827. He spent his life largely in London, save for the years 1800 to 1803, when he lived in a cottage at Felpham, near the seaside town of Bognor, in Sussex. In 1767 he began to attend Henry Pars's drawing school in the Strand. At the age of fifteen, Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, making plates from which pictures for books were printed. He later went to the Royal Academy, and at 22, he was employed as an engraver to a bookseller and publisher. When he was nearly 25, Blake married Catherine Bouchier. They had no children but were happily married for almost 45 years. In 1784, a year after he published his first volume of poems, Blake set up his own engraving business.

Many of Blake's best poems are found in two collections: Songs of Innocence (1789) to which was added, in 1794, the Songs of Experience (unlike the earlier work, never published on its own). The complete 1794 collection was called Songs of Innocence and Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Broadly speaking the collections look at human nature and society in optimistic and pessimistic terms, respectively - and Blake thinks that you need both sides to see the whole truth.

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Blake had very firm ideas about how his poems should appear. Although spelling was not as standardised in print as it is today, Blake was writing some time after the publication of Dr. Johnson's authoritative Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Many of Blake's spellings which seem odd or old-fashioned to us, must have struck his readers, too, as quaint. Blake similarly used non-standard forms of punctuation, especially using the ampersand (&) in place of the word "and" (today this is only normal in business names). In keeping with his profession, Blake did not print his poems in type, but engraved them (like handwriting) on an illustrated background. The printed copies were then coloured by hand: Blake was an artist in words and pictures. In the AQA Anthology, the spelling and punctuation have been modernised in standard forms; type replaces handwriting and no pictures appear - you should look at copies of the poems as Blake produced them, in order to decide whether this is a good or bad thing.

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About the poems

Both of these poems appear (together) in Songs of Innocence. The titles more or less tell the reader what the poems are about. In the first, a father leaves behind his tearful child in the dark. In the second, as the child cries, God appears, kisses the child and restores him to his mother who has been crying and looking for the boy. In The Songs of Experience are two poems called A Little BOY Lost and A Little GIRL Lost. These are both horrible, especially the former, in which a priest accuses a boy of blasphemy (for not showing God enough love), puts him in an "iron chair" and burns him to death "in a holy place" where "many had been burned before", while his parents look on and weep.

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The poems in detail

The three human characters are not at all specific people but clearly representative or universal types - like people in the parables of Jesus. (This is true of all the people we meet in The Songs of Innocence and Experience, though sometimes there are distinguishing features as with the children in The Little Black Boy or The Chimney Sweeper, where the sweep is called Tom Dacre.) In this poem, God appears, too but not as an abstract idea (a view of God that Blake hated). He is like the God of the Book of Genesis (who walks in the Garden of Eden and shuts up Noah in the Ark).

The first half of The Little Boy Lost is a cry of alarm from the child - he asks where his father is going, tells him to slow down and asks the father to speak, or else his "little boy" will be lost. Instead of the father's expected reply comes the shocking discovery - where the reader shares the child's horror - that the father is gone, and it is dark night. The dew is forming and the boy is in a deep mire (muddy or marshy ground). As the boy cries, the mist goes away - perhaps a hint that something good will happen.

The reader is not very alarmed - for two reasons.

• First, all the Songs of Innocence have happy endings of sorts, and
• second, the reader can see the title of the next poem.

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In The Little Boy Found we see another hopeful sign - the boy is being guided by some kind of "wandering light". It may belong to the father who has left him, or may suggest (in the word "led") a guardian angel or spirit. As the boy cries, God comes to his aid - in white, which suggests his goodness. God is also "like his father", which may mean he looks like the father who earlier deserted the boy, or may suggest the idea that God is the boy's (and everyone's) real father - more so than any earthly parent.

The father, who leaves the boy, is contrasted with the anxious mother who goes in search of him, "pale" with sorrow and weeping (though Blake may mean "weeping" to refer to the "little boy"). God brings the child back to his mother. Attentive readers will see that she has no hope of finding the boy without God's help. Why? Because she has been looking in the wrong place - the "lonely dale" (a valley), while the boy has been in a marsh ("mire") or "fen". (Unless Blake means us to understand that the fen is in the valley - which is possible.)

The poems also appeal to one of our most basic fears - or rather two:

• our fear, if we are children, of being lost or left behind by our parents and
• our fear (perhaps even greater), if we are parents, of losing a child.

(This is amplified by real-life reports of abductions and violence to children - and is one of the most profound and terrifying fears we ever face. For many readers, The Little Boy Lost will be far scarier than any conventional horror story or film.)

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The poet's method

Blake's narratives, simply as stories, are very naïve and childlike. But they tell of profound and universal experiences or ideas. We worry about children who really get lost - and any young child has fears (perhaps made stronger by parents' warnings) of being lost or separated from mother or father.

The two poems thus form a narrative in two parts - being lost and being found. It also contrasts the way that human parents fail with God's power and love in caring for children. There is a very similar but much more detailed story in Chapter 7 of The Wind in the Willows ("The Piper at the Gates of Dawn") where little Portly the otter is lost but restored to his worried parents with the help of the animals' god, Pan.

Blake does not use metaphors - where something in the poem represents some other thing, usually an abstraction, in a one-to-one way. Rather he uses symbols - and leaves it to the reader to decide what they mean. So we may understand God in the poem as being more or less the same as in Genesis, or, very differently, as the divine element in good people who look after children. And we may see the poem as being about a real child getting lost in a fen, or about the way in which generally, we are unsure about the world and our place in it.

The poems are very short - each has only two stanzas, and the pair together have a mere 16 lines (whereas, say, Wordsworth's The Affliction of Margaret runs to 77). Although the narrative seems to be stripped down to its essentials, there is room for some suggestive details - so we read

• that God is "in white",
• that the "vapour" (mist, presumably) flies away,
• that a "wandering light" leads the child and
• that he is lost in a fen, while his mother seeks him in a dale.

With this poet, we can never quite be sure how far these things are intentional and how far they are simply suggested by the need for a rhyme - but it is wiser to suppose that Blake means exactly what he says (or writes) in the Songs of Innocence and Experience.

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Chidiock Tichborne: Tichborne's Elegy

About the poet

Chidiock Tichborne (1558-86) was a Roman Catholic conspirator. In 1586 he became one of six who formed a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I. The plot was discovered and Tichborne arrested on August 14th. At his trial a month later he pleaded guilty, and on September 20th he was executed. He was disembowelled, while still alive - but when the queen learned of this, she forbade the continuing of this practice. On the eve of his execution, the 28-year-old Tichborne wrote a letter to his wife Agnes, containing the poem that became his own elegy. The AQA Anthology gives Tichborne's first name as "Charles", which is a bizarre mistake.

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About the poem

The poem is a reflection on the writer's life and a lament for his misfortune. In three stanzas, Tichborne depicts his situation as a series of contrasts - each time leading to the same refrain or chorus. The modern poet Simon Armitage said, in a Channel 4 broadcast in 1998:

"It is a strange circumstance to know the date of your own death in advance. Hardly any of us know that...It's a very formal poem. It's very neat. It's very tidy. It's very well crafted...It begs the question, if you're going to die in the morning how can you sit down and be so calm and collected and make a poem that takes up so much craft and thought? Because I'm sure most of us would be gibbering wrecks, we'd hardly be able to hold the pen! "

The poem could present the situation of any condemned man or anyone dying while still young - but it is clear that the poet speaks for himself, in his own person. Indeed, the poem is not written for publication, but is part of a private message from Tichborne to his wife.

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The poem in detail

The poem has a very strict form - perhaps Tichborne, who was not known as a writer, does not want to take any risks. It proceeds by a series of statements in which the first half somehow contradicts or contrasts with the second half - we call this antithesis, or antithetic parallelism. In each case something that began as, or should be, good becomes bad - leading to the paradox of the last line in which Tichborne notes that he is still alive but his life is really over.

Among many images - one for each line - a few stand out or deserve more comment.

• In the first stanza, the crop of corn that becomes a "field of tares" suggests Jesus' parable of the weeds and the wheat - a farmer sows good seed, but his enemy sows tares (weeds) on the same ground.
• In the second stanza, the thread that is cut but not yet spun, suggests the idea of the Fates - three sisters (in Greek myth) who determined the length of man's life. Clotho spun the thread, Lachesis measured it, and Atropos cut it with her shears.
• In the final stanza the "shade" is an old word for a ghost or something dead (not, as today, a place out of the sunlight). And in the penultimate line the "glass" is an hour glass (as in the picture in the AQA Anthology). The glass is both full, yet has run through (from the top to the bottom half).

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The poet's method

The poem is written in the iambic pentameter line, with a simple ABABCC rhyme scheme. Each stanza (verse) ends with the same refrain. The lines all begin similarly - with "My", "I" or "And". They all contain the phrase "is but" or "and yet" or a verb phrase introduced by "and". And almost every line contains a metaphor with a paradoxical meaning, but there are no similes in the poem.

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Responding to the poem

Explaining the images

Choose ten or more of the poet's paradoxical images and explain, for each one,

• what the image is
• what it means
• how you think it works in the poem

You could illustrate the images as a way of remembering them.

Write your own elegy

Imagine that you knew that you had only one more day to live - either as you are now, or at some future point. Write a short message to your partner, or a close relative or friend, summing up what you think of your life and imminent death. You could do this as a poem or prose statement.

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Thomas Hardy: The Man He Killed

About the poet

Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928. He was the son of a mason, from Dorset, in the south west of England. He studied to be an architect, and worked in this profession for many years. He also began to write prose fiction. Hardy eventually published many novels - these vary in merit but include many which are established as masterpieces of English fiction.

Hardy enjoyed commercial success, but his work proved controversial, and his publishers continually tried to tone it down. Critics savagely condemned his last two novels, Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Hardy no longer needed to write prose fiction for a living - the royalties from his existing work gave him more than enough security. He had always preferred poetry - and believed that he was better as a writer in this form. He wrote verse throughout his life, but did not publish a volume until Wessex Poems and Other Verses (for which he did his own illustrations) appeared in 1898. Hardy certainly made up for lost time, eventually publishing six collections of verse as well as the huge poetic drama, The Dynasts, of which the first part appeared in 1904.

Thomas Hardy was married twice - his first marriage, long and mostly unhappy, was to Emma Gifford. They married in 1874. Emma died in 1912, and in 1914 Hardy married his secretary, Florence Dugdale, who later became his biographer. Hardy died in 1928, aged 87. He had asked to be laid beside Emma, but his body was buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Only his heart was placed in Emma's grave - or was it? There is a curious story that his housekeeper placed the heart on the kitchen table, where his sister's cat seized it, and ran off into the nearby woods. In this version of events, a pig's heart was duly buried beside Emma.

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About the poem

This poem was written at the time of the Boer War, but there is nothing in it that refers to any particular conflict - it could refer to almost any war. The poem appears as one half of a conversation. The speaker tells about how he killed another man in battle, and reflects on how much he and his victim had in common, and how little reason they had to fight each other.

Superficially a simple, uncomplicated piece, this is, in fact, a very skilful poem heavily laden with irony and making interesting use of colloquialism. The title is slightly odd, as Hardy uses the third-person pronoun "He", though the poem is narrated in the first person. The "He" of the title (the "I" of the poem) is the soldier who tries to explain (and perhaps justify) his killing of another man in battle.

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The poem in detail

In the first stanza the narrator establishes the common ground between himself and his victim: in more favourable circumstances they could have shared hospitality together. This idea is in striking contrast to that in the second stanza: the circumstances in which the men did meet. "Ranged as infantry" suggests that the men are not natural foes but have been "ranged", that is set against each other. The phrase "as he at me" indicates the similarity of their situations.

In the third stanza the narrator gives his reason for shooting the supposed enemy. The conversational style of the poem enables Hardy to repeat the word "because", implying hesitation, and therefore doubt, on the part of the narrator. He cannot at first easily think of a reason. When he does so, the assertion ("because he was my foe") is utterly unconvincing. The speaker has already made clear the sense in which the men were foes: an artificial enmity created by others. "Of course" and "That's clear enough" are blatantly ironic: the enmity is not a matter of course, the claim is far from "clear" to the reader, and the pretence of assurance on the narrator's part is destroyed by his admission beginning "although..."

The real reason for the victim's enlistment in the army, like the narrator's, is far from being connected with patriotic idealism and belief in his country's cause. The soldier's joining was partly whimsical ("Off-hand like") and partly the result of economic necessity: he was unemployed and had already sold off his possessions. He did not enlist for any other reason.

The narrator concludes with a repetition of the contrast between his treatment of the man he killed and how he might have shared hospitality with him in other circumstances, or even been ready to extend charity to him. He prefaces this with the statement that war is "quaint and curious", as if to say, a funny old thing. This tends to show war as innocuous and acceptable, but the events narrated in the poem, as well as the reader's general knowledge of war, make it clear that conflict is far from "quaint and curious". Hardy uses the words with heavy irony, knowing full well how inaccurate such a description really is.

This is a rather bitter poem showing the stupidity of war, and demolishing belief in the patriotic motives of those who confront one another in battle. The narrator finds no good reason for his action; Hardy implies that there is no good reason. The short lines, simple rhyme scheme, and everyday language make the piece almost nursery rhyme like in simplicity, again in ironic contrast to its less than pleasant subject.

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The poet's method

The first thing to note about the poem is that it is written as is spoken - like Browning's My Last Duchess, it is a monologue. It is not just colloquial (like speech) in style and vocabulary. It even has inverted commas (speech marks) to show that it is meant to be spoken.

The vocabulary is very simple - most of the words are familiar or everyday terms (from the common lexicon), apart from a few dialect expressions, like "sat us down", "nipperkin" (a small measure of drink) or "traps" (possessions), and the abbreviation "'list" for "enlist" (join up, become a soldier in the army).

The poem is written in a simple metre and a tight ABAB rhyme scheme. Most of the lines are end stopped - but Hardy suggests the soldier's doubt at one point by using "although" to run on to the next line.

The structure of the poem is clever - the speaker ends up with the same comment he makes at the start: that war makes people fight when their natural behaviour would be to share a drink together or for one to help the other out with a small loan.

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Responding to the poem

• Does Hardy share the views of the speaker in the poem?
• How different and how similar are the two men in the poem? What do they have in common?
• Comment on Hardy's use of colloquial writing (writing like speech) in this poem.
• Why does the soldier say that war is "quaint and curious"? Does Hardy want the reader to agree with this view?

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Walt Whitman: Patrolling Barnegat

About the poet

Walt Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892. He was one of ten children and was born on New York's Long Island. He worked as a printer, teacher and property speculator. In 1855 he published 13 poems in a collection entitled Leaves of Grass. Over the years, Whitman published fresh editions of this collection, the last one in 1892, each time adding many more poems - eventually it would contain hundreds of poems and some 10,500 lines, making Leaves of Grass the length of a good sized novel.

Whitman set out in Leaves of Grass to write about himself, giving his purpose as:

"a feeling or ambition to articulate and faithfully express in literary or poetic form and uncompromisingly, my own physical, emotional, moral, intellectual and aesthetic Personality, in the midst of, and tallying, the momentous spirit and facts of its immediate days, and of current America"

During the American Civil War (1861-1865) Whitman served as a nurse in a military hospital, where he caught an infection that weakened him. In 1873, Whitman moved to Camden in New Jersey (inland from Barnegat), where he stayed until his death. Whitman published other books, but his reputation rests almost wholly on Leaves of Grass.

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About the poem

The date in the AQA Anthology is mistaken - this poem (according to the Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume 16: Early National Literature) was first published in The American in 1880 and reprinted in Harper's Monthly in 1881. By this time, Whitman was settled in New Jersey, where Barnegat lies on the coast in what is today called Ocean County. The title is also "corrected" to the standard UK form - Whitman writes "Patroling" with one "l".

This poem comes from a section of Leaves of Grass called Sea Drift - containing poems, inspired by the sea, which explore the mysteries of life and death. It contains two of the most famous of all Whitman's lyrics - Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life. Barnegat is on the Atlantic Coast of south New Jersey (between Atlantic City and Jersey City). The wild sea that Whitman describes now draws sailing enthusiasts to Ocean County. Barnegat is on the coast - some way inland lies Camden, where Whitman lived from 1873 until his death. By a curious coincidence, since 1996, Barnegat Bay has been protected as one of the USA's estuaries of national importance - having been nominated for this by a state governor called Whitman.

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The poem in detail

We are not told who is "patroling" but assume that it is the poet, late at night. The poem is almost a list of details, each line ending with a verb. Mostly these suggest strong physical action or vivid details. It is not clear whether the "dim, weird forms" are natural features, ships or people - but there is a clear sense of nature as massively powerful, threatening man's precarious existence.

Whitman suggests the idea of evil spirits by describing the wind as "shouts of demoniac laughter" and seeing "waves, air, midnight" as a savage "trinity" (three-in-one) - an image that appears twice. His readers would compare this to the Holy Trinity of Father (God), Son (Jesus) and Holy Ghost (Spirit).

He shows the reader how the person "patroling" cannot be sure what is happening out at sea - by the final reference to "dim, weird forms" and earlier in the questions about "that in the distance". Is it "a wreck" and "is the red signal flaring"?

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The poet's method

Nearly all of the poems in Leaves of Grass are written in free verse - that is, without formal patterns of rhyme or metre. Sometimes this gives us little more than chopped prose - prose broken into lines. This poem has a more clear structure - like Old English (Anglo-Saxon) verse, and the later poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the lines fall into two halves, each containing two stressed syllables.

The other formal feature is more obvious - each line finishes with a verb ending in "-ing". This is the form called the present participle. This means that the whole poem, set out as a single sentence, does not at any point have a main finite verb.

(Silly people might say this makes it "ungrammatical" or that Whitman uses "bad" grammar. And you would not want to risk writing like this in an exam, unless you could convince the examiners that you had a good reason for doing it. The first chapter of Dickens' Great Expectations also contains a "sentence" with no main verb. These are examples of artistic licence - if people think you know what you are doing, you can break the rules in some kinds of writing activity.)

Whitman uses effects of sound - particularly

• alliteration (repeating the same initial consonant), and
• onomatopoeia (using words that sound like what they mean).

He combines both of these effects with repeated use of the sibilant "s" sound - which may resemble the sound of the surf breaking and falling back. (You don't need to know these technical names but you should be able to find examples of them in use and explain how they work in the poem - you should do this before writing or speaking about the poems for assessed work or an exam.)

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Among the other technical effects Whitman uses are:

• Anthropomorphism or animism - Whitman writes about natural things as if they are features of a person or intelligent creature - such as "muttering" and "laughter". He also writes as if the natural world has attitudes or feelings, with qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs) like "wild", "fitfully", "fierce", "watchful", "tireless" and "never remitting". (It is not clear whether the "struggling" and "watching" at the end of the poem are also being done by natural things or by real people.)
• Images - all of the images are of things that are really (or "literally") there to be seen. But they may also represent other things. Can you find any vivid or memorable images?
• Repetition - Whitman writes many things twice, sometimes a whole phrase ("milk-white combs careering", "slush and sand"), sometimes a single word ("midnight"), and sometimes a different form of the same root word ("beachy" and "beach").

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Ideas for studying the poem

Performing the poem

This is a very suitable text for dramatic performance. It is easy to learn by heart or to learn for reading from a script. A pair or small group could share the lines and provide suitable sound FX - using voices only or musical instruments. In a teaching group, the listeners could provide storm noises. If your school is near the sea or a river estuary, it might be possible to do this outdoors - though probably it would not be sensible to do this at midnight in a real storm. More sensibly, pupils could make an audiotape, CD or digital recording for a computer to record the performance, or use presentation graphics software (such as PowerPoint™) to accompany a performance of the poem.

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Using visual input

• Use a highlighter (on printed text or electronic text) to show things like stress patterns and important images.
• Prepare a storyboard for a short film to illustrate the poem or for which the spoken text of poem would provide the soundtrack.
• Make a poster to show the important images and scenes presented in the poem.

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Creative writing

Find out about Barnegat by researching Web sites - there are lots, including sites for New Jersey State or for Ocean County and its sailing clubs. Using the information that you find, try to write one or more of the following:

• a travel guide to Barnegat Bay
• the script for a 30-second TV or radio advert for Ocean County as a holiday destination
• a single-page leaflet giving safety advice to schoolchildren visiting Barnegat
• your own poem about, or prose description of, "Patrolling" some place you know well, in extreme or unusual weather conditions.

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 130 -
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"

About the poet

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is widely regarded as among the greatest of all writers - and certainly the most celebrated figure in English literature. He was brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, where, in 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, by whom he had three children. Shortly after this, he left for London, where he joined a theatre company, as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare wrote well over thirty plays - the number is sometimes disputed, and he had collaborators for some of his work - which include histories, tragedies, comedies and pastoral romances. Shakespeare also wrote poetry in narrative and lyric forms. His Sonnets appeared in print in 1609 but much of the work was completed in the 1590s. Shakespeare was a shareholder in the theatre company, and owned property in London. He became wealthy, and retired to Stratford in 1613.

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About the poem

This is one of the 154 Sonnets that Shakespeare published in 1609. The first 126 sonnets present a young man, whom the writer evidently admires, who may well be the person named in a dedication at the start of the collection as "Mr. W.H.". Sonnets 127 to 152 concern a woman known to scholars as the Dark Lady. The last two sonnets have more conventional themes. Sonnet 130 praises the Dark Lady unconventionally by rejecting the usual exaggerations of love poetry (which Shakespeare calls "false compare") in favour of a more truthful and modest description.

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The poem in detail

Shakespeare opens with a bold statement that the eyes of his beloved lady are not like the sun (where another poet might say they are as bright as, or brighter than, the sun) - and continues in this way to understate her attractions or present them honestly. Her lips are red, but not as much as coral. Her skin is not white as snow but brown and her hair black. Shakespeare describes the contrast of red and white on a rose that is "damasked" (the term comes from Damascus, in Syria, which was known for decorative arts). But, he says, he has not seen this damask rose effect in his mistress's cheeks. Her breath, he says, is not as delightful as perfume (a line that may cause us to think about the lack of oral hygiene in Elizabethan England. "Reeks" does not have the modern suggestion of an unpleasant smell, but means more or less to give off an odour - which may or may not be pleasant. We might use the verb "smells" nowadays, but until quite recent times, this verb referred only to what we do with our noses). And her voice is less "pleasing" in its sound than music. Although he has never seen a goddess moving, Shakespeare suggests that goddesses do not need to tread on the ground - whereas he knows that his beloved does "tread on the ground", when she moves.

Having acknowledged all of her imperfections or limitations, the poet swears that his beloved is, nonetheless, as special as any woman "belied" (misrepresented) by "false compare" (untrue or lying comparisons).

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The poet's method

This poem is a sonnet of the kind we call Shakespearean - it has a twelve line section (organized as three quatrains - groups of four lines - with an ABAB rhyme), leading to a concluding rhymed couplet. The first twelve lines make out the case for the ordinariness of the beloved. The concluding couplet changes the way we read this, however, by claiming that the beloved is just as special as any other woman who is the subject of more extravagant descriptions - because these are false.

The lines almost suggest alternative versions in which the "false compare" might appear - for example, the first line could easily be changed to "My mistress' eyes are very like the sun" or "brighter than the sun", while the second line could begin "coral is no more red..."

Shakespeare names many of the things, especially those from the natural world, that might appear in a conventional love poem - the sun, coral, snow, roses, perfume, music and a goddess. Perhaps the most important image is the familiar one in the eleventh and twelfth lines - the poet has not seen a goddess (he does not claim his mistress is a goddess, as some might do) but knows that his beloved is down to earth or has her feet on the ground. To the reader who wants to see women as dainty and idealized creatures, this may seem shocking; but to the reader who is attracted by real and tangible flesh and blood, the image will be more persuasive.

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Responding to the poem

The portrait of the lady

What evidence does the poem give about the poet's beloved? Using all the available details, write a prose description (you may illustrate it, if you have any talent for drawing).

Is the poet sexist?

In this sonnet Shakespeare lists physical qualities but says nothing of character. What is your view of presenting a woman in this way? Although he originally wrote the sonnets for his patron (a wealthy nobleman, the Earl of Southampton), Shakespeare did eventually publish the poems - so he is letting the world know what he thinks of the physical features of the Dark Lady.

A perfect partner

Shakespeare praises the Dark Lady, but shows that she does not fit conventional or stereotyped ideals. What would your perfect partner be like? Write a description (it could be done as a list) of the qualities (physical, psychological, emotional) that your preferred partner would have. You can do this seriously or treat it comically.

Alternatively, you could (as Shakespeare does in a way) write an explanation of why it is silly even to try to invent an ideal or perfect partner - because we do not know what we really want until life surprises us with particular unique people and experiences.

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Robert Browning: My Last Duchess

About the poet

Robert Browning (1812-89) was, with Alfred Lord Tennyson, one of the two most celebrated of Victorian poets. His father was a bank clerk, and Browning educated himself by reading in the family library. He published many verse dramas and dramatic monologues (poems, like My Last Duchess, in which a single character speaks to the reader), notably the collections Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864). His greatest success came in 1868 with The Ring and the Book - a verse narrative in twelve books, spoken by a range of different characters. In her lifetime his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) was more famous. She was a semi-invalid, following an accident in her teens. In 1846 she and Robert ran away from her father (who tried to control her) and eloped to Italy.

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About the poem

The date in the AQA Anthology is wrong. This poem was published in Dramatic Lyrics in 1842. (the same year as Tennyson's Ulysses). The poem reflects Browning's interest in Italian politics of the late Middle Ages (the time known as the Renaissance). The poem appears as one half of a conversation. The speaker is the unnamed Duke of Ferrara, a city-state in Lombardy (now the north of Italy - but Italy as a unified state was created only in the 19th century - long after Browning wrote this poem; in the Middle Ages each city, with the surrounding country, was an independent realm with its own ruler). The listener is an envoy (a kind of diplomat and messenger). His master, a count, has sent him to negotiate the dowry for the marriage of his (the count's) daughter to the duke, whose "last duchess" is the subject of his speech - and of the poem. While having her portrait painted, the duchess revealed innocent qualities that irritated the duke so far, that he chose to have her killed. His power is absolute, and she is easily replaced. But the portrait, by a master painter, is of far more value to the duke, and he is pleased to show this off to his distinguished visitor. The critic Isobel Armstrong sums up the poem like this:

"The mad duke...cannot love without so possessing and destroying the identity of his wife that he literally kills her and lives with her dead substitute, a work of art."

Her reading may be right - but are we sure the duke is mad? Perhaps he is sane but very cruel and ruthless. The duke names two artists - both imaginary. They are the painter Frà (Brother) Pandolf and the sculptor Claus of Innsbruck. The poem may draw on a literary tradition of despotic Italians (as we find in John Webster's play, The Duchess of Malfi or John Keats' poem, Isabella). But it is not so improbable - Dante, in the Inferno (Hell) recalls various true stories about Italian nobles which match or surpass (outdo) this for cruelty.

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The poem in detail

Browning opens with the Duke's words to his guest. He explains why he has named the painter, and that the portrait is kept behind a curtain which he alone is permitted to draw back. And when he does this, he notes how the viewer is curious but perhaps frightened to ask about the thing that puzzles him. We see that this visitor is not the first to "ask" in this way.

So what is it that the viewer sees? It is a "spot of joy" in the cheek of the duchess. The duke tries to imagine what the painter said that would cause this slight reaction. The duke does not object to the artist's showing such courtesy. But he thinks his wife should be more dignified - and not so easily "impressed". Specifically he faults her for finding equal pleasure in four things - as if they are not at all of equal value.

These are:

• his "favour at her breast" - either a reference to their love-making or merely to the duke's approval of her appearance
• the sun setting
• a gift of fruit from an unnamed courtier
• the white mule she rode

The duke accepts that it was good for her to show gratitude, but bad that she ranked "anybody's gift" with his giving her his family name (nine hundred years old).

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The duke considers the possibility of explaining to her why she was wrong. He notes that he lacks the "skill in speech" to make his will "quite clear to such an one". But anyway, he would not try even if he had the skill, because this would be a loss of dignity - "some stooping". And he chooses "never to stoop". Instead he let her carry on for a while - "this grew" - then "gave commands". We are not told what the commands were but can work them out from the result. This appears in three things:

• the statement that all smiles stopped - this may at first seem ambiguous, and we think it is because she had reason to be serious or unhappy. Then we realize that the duke means that all smiles and everything else stopped for the duchess
• the repeated statement that the duchess, in the painting "stands/As if alive" - but she isn't
• the sequel - the duke needs or wants a wife, and is arranging his next marriage. He praises the Count's known generosity while stressing that it is the wife, rather than the dowry, that he really wants.

The poem's ending recalls its beginning - as the duke points out another treasure. A bronze sculpture of Neptune (the Roman god of the sea, called Poseidon by the Greeks) taming a sea-horse. This is like the start of the poem. But it is also quite unlike it - Frà Pandolf's masterpiece is a portrait of a real person, to whom the duke was married - yet she is never named, only identified by her relation to the duke. Claus's bronze is of a fantastic, remote and mythical subject. Yet to the duke they may seem of equal value, since he mentions them in the same breath.

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The poet's method

This is an amazingly skilful poem - there is one speaker, yet we learn about four characters:

• the duke
• the duchess
• the visitor (the count's envoy)
• the painter, Frà Pandolf

One of the reasons why Browning likes the monologue so much, is that he is able to exploit the gap between what the speaker (within the poem) wants us to know, and what the poet (standing outside the poem) allows us to read between the lines. What things do we (as readers) learn here, that the duke does not mean to tell his visitor?

In one way the piece is very unlike most lyric poetry - there are no notable metaphors or similes. All the images are of things that are literally present, or that the duke recalls from his memory of the past. Check this for yourself.

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The poem is very conventional in form - it uses the line that Shakespeare relies on for most of the dialogue in his plays (the technical name is the iambic pentameter - as it has five [Latin penta] poetic "feet", each of which has two syllables, of which the second [usually] is stressed). In this poem Browning arranges the lines in rhyming pairs, which we call "couplets". Like Shakespeare (and later writers such as Coleridge and Wordsworth), Browning makes the lines run on - or if you prefer he does not end stop them. The technical name for this is enjambement ("using the legs" in French). What does this mean, and why should Browning do it?

• What it means mainly is that most punctuation marks appear within the lines (not at the end) and most lines end without a punctuation mark.
• What it also means is that, when you read the poem (aloud or in your head) you should not stop at the end of a line, but should pause or stop at any punctuation mark.
• Browning does it because rhyming couplets that stopped at the end of each line would seem mechanical and not at all like real speech - and he wants the poem to sound natural. Of course, this is only a matter of feeling - if we look closely we will realize that even the cleverest speakers would not really be able to speak fluently in couplets.

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Ambiguity and irony

This poem is one in which the relationship between appearance and reality is important - if you prefer, between what things seem and what they really are.

• On the surface it is an account of a polite negotiation between two noblemen, enlivened by the host's decision to show his privileged guest a masterpiece by a great portrait painter (something few visitors would be allowed to see: notice that the portrait is not in a public area but upstairs - at the end of the poem the duke speaks of going "down"), and to recount something of its subject, his previous wife.
• Beneath the surface is a terrible story of ruthless and despotic power - of the duke's disapproval of the natural and innocent behaviour of his naïve wife, who does not know the value of his great name. We are less sure about the artist - does Frà Pandolf know, or care about, these things? And equally we are unsure how the listener, the duke's honoured guest, feels about what he hears.

Sometimes we find that the lines have more to say than at first appears - we call this ellipsis, when something is missed out. Look at the following examples from the poem, and say what you think they mean in full - if you like, fill in any blanks that Browning has left for the reader:

• "Her looks went everywhere"
• "I choose/Never to stoop"
• "This grew"
• "I gave commands"
• "All smiles stopped together"

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Pronouns, possessives and other forms of address

The only named characters in the poem are the two artists. The duchess and count are known only by their titles while the rest of the time, like the duke and his guest, they are identified by pronouns - look for the first person pronouns (I and me) for the duke, the second person (you) for the envoy, and the third-person (she and her) for the duchess. We also find the possessive "my" occurring quite frequently.

Browning finds other ways to avoiding using names - to show the duchess's lack of dignity he calls her "such an one", while his bride-to-be, mentioned well after her father, the count, is "his fair daughter's self". The envoy is "sir" repeatedly and (polite) "you", not intimate or familiar "thou" and "thee". This is courteous but marks the listener as the duke's social inferior - to a more eminent man or an equal he would use some such form as "your grace", "your highness" or "my lord".

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Ideas for studying the poem

Reading the poem

This poem is quite long and not very easy for reading when you first meet it. But you need to see it whole in order to get a sense of the narrative. Perhaps the best way is for a teacher (or any other good actor or reader) to present the poem in a complete reading - while students listen initially. (If you can't do this live, get a good recording on audiotape.) This could be repeated, perhaps allowing students to see the text. But they will need something to help them sort out what happens - either to make their own bullet points, or to arrange a series of statements about the poem into a sequence. You could take the same statements and organize them, for instance, in these differing ways:

• the order in which they appear in the poem
• the order in which they really happened
• their importance to the reader of the poem or the duke in the poem

This is not a poem for students to approach for the first time in an exam - and it will be hard for some to keep a sense of what is going on in it. Many readers will have problems with the cultural setting, though readers from some ethnic groups will be familiar with the idea of arranged marriages and dowries.

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Possessions and girl power

Remember that this poem is not a real historical record. Some Italian Renaissance rulers did have great power - but we also know of scheming and powerful women (such as the poisoner Lucrezia Borgia). Do you think the poem depicts a common or very unusual situation? Even today we talk of "trophy wives", and we know of some men who want to show off portraits of their wives or girlfriends.

In the modern western world the law protects wives from such treatment, but both men and women have a way of getting rid of their partners through divorce.

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The case against the duke

The duke never says openly or unambiguously that he killed his wife or ordered anyone else to kill her. Go through the poem and note down any clues to her fate. You may wish to put them under these different headings:

• what the duke and his servants did
• how he or they did it
• when and where this happened
• why it happened

Alternatively one could write a psychological profile of the duke - perhaps trying to establish whether he is mad or bad, or both at once.

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Frà Pandolf and the duchess

We have some hints as to the kind of thing the artist would say to the duchess - as a gallant compliment, or to put her at her ease. And we also know how (in the duke's eyes, anyway) his wife would react. The duke would not object to the artist's giving his wife compliments - he would not feel jealousy, so much as pride in another person's admiring his possession. (He would not feel jealousy because neither the artist nor the duchess would dare to do anything beyond courteous conversation.) Write out as a script for the stage or a film, radio or TV drama, one or more scenes based on the duchess's sitting for the artist - what things might they say to each other, and how?

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Storyboarding and comic strips

This poem is very suitable for adapting into other forms. Without changing the text, it could be made into a comic strip or graphic novel. It could also be made into a short feature film or radio/TV play. In this case, one could use only the duke's speech, as a voiceover, or add other dialogue to this, as well as any sound FX and music.

Students could produce the script for this, or could combine it with work for speaking and listening, and present the play live or - best of all - on VHS or audiotape. This could be used as a teaching resource for students in future years.

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The envoy's report to the count

When the visitor (the silent listener in the poem) returns to his master, the count, what will happen?

• Will the envoy (messenger) dare to tell the count everything?
• Even if he does, will the count care - will he be more eager for an alliance with a duke, than for his daughter's welfare?
• Will the count's daughter have a different character, so that she is able to avoid displeasing the duke and may be able to manipulate him?

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Robert Browning: The Laboratory

About the poem

This piece, like My Last Duchess, comes from the 1842 collection, Dramatic Lyrics. It has a similar subject - a person who kills (or is about to kill) her rival, in the presence of her lover - who appears to be connected to the speaker in some way - perhaps her husband or an ex-lover who has spurned her for the rival who is soon to die. It is in the form of a monologue, and once more the silent listener is important, too. He is an expert in poisons (like the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet) who sells his services to a wealthy woman. The subtitle (ANCIEN RÉGIME) refers to an older form of rule or government - suggesting that the speaker comes from a past age. We do not know for certain that the speaker is female - but this is suggested by the things, listed in the fifth stanza, in which she will carry her poison ("...an earring, a casket/A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket..."), and by her offering a kiss to the poisoner, when he has finished his work. The poem recalls the saying that "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned". Browning explores the jealousy and vengefulness of someone disappointed in love.

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The poem in detail

The poem opens with the speaker's putting on a mask, so she can see, with safety, the old man at work. She is curious, wondering which is "the poison" - either which is the best one for the job, or which is the one the old man has chosen. She speaks of "her" - we assume that this is a rival, but it is not yet clear. The second stanza suggests this more strongly, as we learn that "he" (an unspecified man) "is with her" and that "they know that I [the speaker] know", where they are and what they are doing. They think she is miserable because of their scorn and has gone to pray in a church - whereas she is angry and vengeful. The jealous speaker finds more pleasure, she says, in watching the old poisoner at work, than in being at the royal court where men wait on her. And she expresses her curiosity by asking about the poisonous substances - like the gum in the "mortar" (the pot in which the poisoner will grind things to powder, using a pestle). She asks about the small glass container (phial) and notes the beautiful colour of the deadly liquid in it.

The speaker has begun with a specific purpose - of poisoning one person - but now she indulges in a fantasy of carrying many different poisons, and giving them out liberally - perhaps at the court, where she imagines killing two women (named as Pauline and Elise). We assume that neither of these is her real intended victim, since this woman is never named elsewhere but always identified by the pronouns "she" and "her". (Maybe the man whose attentions now fall on the rival has also favoured Pauline and Elise at some time.)

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When the poison is ready, the speaker seems disappointed

• first, that it is not as bright as the blue liquid in the phial, and
• second, that the dose is too little for such a powerful character, who ensnares men and has a "magnificent" control over the sex.

The speaker reveals that she has tried to face up to her rival conventionally, but without effect. And now she thinks, too, that she wants her victim to suffer and the lover to "remember her dying face". She wants also to remove the mask, once there is no danger to her, so that she can see closely the "delicate droplet" the poisoner has prepared. The poem ends with an invitation to the old poisoner to kiss the jealous client - though with a sudden afterthought, that first she should brush off the dust that has settled on her, in case this inadvertently kills her.

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As with My Last Duchess, we form a vivid sense of the speaker, but it is not always clear and we have less clear ideas about anyone else here. We see something of the old man at work, and sense his greed for gain, as he helps himself to the client's jewels and gold. We also the speaker's view of "her" - the rival, a scornful and manipulative woman, who seems not to care for, or worry about, whatever the rejected "minion" might do to retaliate. And there are even fewer details about "him" - the man who prefers the rival. But we do not trust that these people are exactly as the speaker presents them.

She shows something of herself - she appears to be wealthy and mixes in the highest society. But she is very different from the Duke of Ferrara, who merely speaks a word, and silences his wife forever. This character is personally weak - unable to use her position or forceful speech to change her situation. She does not use open enmity - yet resorts to stealth. She cannot keep a man's love, but almost flirts with the old man who mixes the poison - she offers him a kiss, as if she were voluptuous and desirable, but we know that she cannot compete with her rival.

When she calls herself "little" and a "minion", she perhaps tries to show what others think of her.

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The poet's method

The poem is written in twelve stanzas, all of four lines, rhymed AABB. The metre is anapaestic (two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed one) - and this creates a rather jaunty effect, which seems unsuited to the poem's subject, if we take it too seriously. But Browning intends the poem to be perhaps almost comic, over the top and melodramatic - it has some of the qualities of a popular horror film, where the characters and situations are grotesque and outrageous.

This rollicking, lively effect is reinforced by the frequent alliteration - "moisten and mash...pound at thy powder".

Browning repeatedly points up the contrast between the luxury and opulence of the court and the grimness of the laboratory. At the same time, the speaker makes a comparison between conventional jewels that adorn the person, and the idea of special jewellery to hold deadly poisons - "an earring, a casket...a filigree basket". Perhaps Browning expects the reader to make the connection between the evil of the poison in the jewels and the idea that ordinary wealth (gold) is the root of all evils.

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He revels in an exotic vocabulary (a special lexicon) both of the poison laboratory and of precious jewels - "mortar", "gum", "gold oozings", "phial", "lozenge" and "pastile".

There is also some incongruity between the formal politeness of the speaker, saying "prithee", and the grim nature of her request.

The poem will appeal to contemporary readers with its gothic qualities - we find these, before Browning, in prose fiction like the English gothic novel and the American gothic of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, which depict sick or unbalanced characters, often without passing a judgement. Nowadays we are used to novels and films that show us these abnormal mental states. The speaker in the poem would be more disturbing if we took her more seriously. And Browning also contrives the situation so that we care little for her intended victim - the revenge may be excessive, but "she" seems to invite some such violent punishment.

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Responding to the poem

What happens next?

We know more or less what the speaker is planning. But we may not be too convinced that she will succeed in getting her revenge. And even if she does, will she escape detection or punishment? Will she be content to see "her" die in pain? Write an account of the sequel, using any form you think best suited for this. You could do it for example, as

• the script for a film, TV, radio or stage drama (you may use the conventions of the horror genre)
• a report by the chief of police, after the killing has happened
• a series of entries in diaries kept by the speaker or the old man from the laboratory

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The hated rival

Browning does not show directly, though he hints at, what the woman is like for whom the poison is intended. Her own view of her situation might be very different.

• Maybe she thinks the man is trapped in an unhappy relationship with a spiteful or weak woman.
• Maybe she is not so scornful, and has taken a lover because she is looking for support or rescue.

On the other hand, perhaps she is every bit as nasty and self-indulgent as the speaker thinks she is. Write as a prose or verse monologue her view of things - how she sees her lover and her weak rival. Maybe she, too, is planning something unpleasant for the speaker about which she knows nothing.

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An immoral poem?

The Laboratory does not fit modern ideas about Victorian values - which are usually depicted as virtuous, and concerned with happy family relationships. Browning, whose home life with his wife was mostly very happy, is careful to set his more extreme poems in past times and civilizations (he does so, for instance, in My Last Duchess and other pieces like Porphyria's Lover and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came). We are used, perhaps, to poetry that presents good or healthy emotions, such as romantic love or the grief of a parent. But we may be less comfortable with a poem like this one, that seems sick and tasteless in its choice of subject and the way Browning develops it. What is your view of this? Are there limits to how bad a character can be? Should a poet try to explore, say, the mind of Adolf Hitler? (Both the Italian poet Dante and the English poet John Milton test these limits: Dante describes various damned spirits in Hell, while Milton presents the thoughts of Satan. In practice, Dante's wicked men and women are far more horrible, in thought and deed, than Milton's Devil.)

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Alfred Tennyson: Ulysses

About the poet

Tennyson (1809-1892) is usually known by his title Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, where his father was the rector (a clergyman). Alfred was one of twelve children, of whom two became insane and one an alcoholic. He studied at Louth Grammar School, before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he met Arthur Hallam, who was to be his closest friend. Tennyson published his first collection, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830, and a second, Poems, in 1832 - a collection that includes the celebrated The Lady of Shalott. The poems did not at first achieve popular success, though many other writers admired Tennyson and encouraged him. Despite opposition from his father (who looked down on the Tennysons), Arthur Hallam became engaged to Alfred's sister, Emily. In September of 1833, while travelling in Vienna, Hallam died of a sudden haemorrhage. Tennyson was devastated, but began to write the series of elegies that would eventually be published as In Memoriam A.H.H. ("AHH" are the initials of Arthur Hugh Hallam). In 1836, Alfred became engaged to Emily Sellwood, but after four years, her parents made her break off the engagement.

In 1842, Tennyson published another collection, again called simply Poems, in two volumes. From this point on his reputation, and sales of his work, grew steadily. In 1850, Tennyson published his long collection of elegies, In Memoriam. At first it came out anonymously, but readers soon found out who the author was, and the poem sold 60,000 copies within the year. Tennyson had remained faithful to Emily, who had encouraged him with In Memoriam, and had suggested the title. He proposed to her again, that same year, and two weeks after In Memoriam appeared, they married.

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Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, admired Tennyson's work, and, almost certainly through his influence, the queen offered Alfred the post of Poet Laureate that had fallen vacant when Wordsworth died in 1850. In 1852, Alfred and Emily had a son, whom they named Hallam. Another, Lionel, was born in 1853. In this year, the Tennysons moved to Farringford on the Isle of Wight, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Tennyson was now established and secure. He published many more lyrics and some longer works. He had earlier written poems based on the Arthurian legends, and he now began a series of long poems on this subject. The first volume of Idylls of the King, as he named the work, came out in 1859, but Tennyson added more poems throughout his life. Tennyson was a generous man, and all who met him came to like him. When Prince Albert died in 1861, Tennyson wrote a new preface for Idylls of the King, dedicated to the prince's memory. The queen invited Tennyson to visit her, and told him how she drew comfort, after Albert's death, from In Memoriam. In 1883 she conferred on him an honour no poet had ever received, by making him a peer. When Tennyson lay dying in 1892, the last thing he asked to see was a volume of Shakespeare's works. In the mid 20th century, Tennyson's reputation suffered as he was unfairly linked to Victorian "establishment" values. But he is certainly among the finest of all English poets.

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About the poem

Ulysses was written about 1840 and published in the Poems of 1842 - the same year as Browning's Dramatic Lyrics. It depicts the character usually known as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca and hero of Homer's Odyssey. Tennyson uses the Latin form of his name - perhaps in imitation of other writers. One is Dante, the great mediaeval Italian poet, whose Inferno (Hell) contains an account (in Canto 26) of the last voyage of Ulysses, on which Tennyson draws for his poem. Click here to see a prose translation of this Canto of the Inferno. Another is Shakespeare, who presents Ulysses in his play Troilus and Cressida. The Odyssey ends with Odysseus's return to claim his home and rescue his wife from many suitors, who believe Odysseus to be dead. In this poem, many more years have passed. Bored with his life, Ulysses seeks adventure again by making a last voyage, from which he does not expect to return.

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The poem in detail

This poem is another dramatic monologue. The speaker is a well-known mythical character - yet there is something of the real Tennyson here. In the first section of the poem, Ulysses sums up his situation and reasons for wanting to travel - he has little to do, his wife is old, his people unresponsive and brutal. Either they are ignorant of who he is, or, more probably, "they know not me" means that they do not recognize his authority. (Tennyson does not mention her name, but he would expect his readers to know that Ulysses' wife is Penelope.)

The second section is quite puzzling - you should know that many scholars have different ideas about what it means. But we know that Ulysses praises experience while deciding that he cannot simply to "store and hoard" this - especially when he stills wants to find things out which are (till now) "beyond the utmost bound of human thought". He has seen a lot and he is "a part of all" that he has "met" - yet it is stupid (the old meaning of "dull") to come to "an end" when he can still be active.

The third section is much more clear. The ruler has a duty to his people - but he has passed this on to his son, Telemachus. Ulysses loves him, and thinks he will be a far better ruler - he is thoughtful and prudent, and has the patience (which Ulysses lacks) to change the people gradually. Telemachus has a strong sense of duty and will not neglect to worship the gods of his household. But in any case, says Ulysses, this is now Telemachus's "work", while he, Ulysses, has his own work to do.

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The fourth section sees Ulysses make ready to set sail. He speaks affectionately to inspire the loyal sailors who have travelled with him before, and who have chosen, as "free hearts", to join in the last adventure. This will be "some work of noble note", something appropriate to "men that strove with Gods". His purpose is to sail westwards - "beyond the sunset", looking for a "newer world". He sees that he is risking death ("the gulfs will wash us down") but he may also reach the place where the dead go, and "see the great Achilles whom we knew".

The poem ends with a statement of brave acceptance of whatever fate has to offer - sometimes called stoical, after an ancient school of philosophy. (This is an idea that Tennyson develops in In Memoriam - which, in a way modern readers will understand, hesitates between the hope of heaven and the sense that the dead are gone forever, and that we must endure this hard truth. From this Tennyson moves to a sense of determination to live with purpose, and an inclusive love for all mankind.) Finally, we should be "strong in will", the will, that is, to "strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

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The poet's method

The form of the poem

The poem is written in the iambic pentameter line familiar from the plays of Shakespeare. The lines are not rhymed at the end, and we call this blank verse. Tennyson is the most fluent of writers and he is comfortable with end-stopped and run-on lines.

Rhetoric

The poem uses several tricks of rhetoric - to make speaking memorable and persuasive. We find antithesis (contrasting phrases) in:

• "I cannot rest from travel: I will drink/Life to the lees" or in
• "to rust unburnished, not to shine in use".

The poem is also decorated with lines one can take out of their context, and use almost as proverbs:

• "I am a part of all that I have met..."
• "...all experience is an arch..."
• "How dull it is to pause, to make an end..."
• "Death closes all..."
• "'Tis not too late to seek a newer world..."
• "...that which we are, we are."

Ulysses' manner of speaking here often recalls the rhetoric of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.

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Imagery

Metaphor and simile abound in the poem: experience is an arch, inactivity is like rusting while action is like burnishing (polishing; a very apt image as it suggests the warriors' armour that is burnished for use, or left to rust) and Ulysses' spirit is "gray" and yearns with desire to "follow knowledge like a sinking star/Beyond the utmost bound of human thought" (a very complex series of images - try to visualise them, and you will realise this). How many more images can you find, what do they mean, and how do they work?

Ambiguity and double meanings

Ulysses would not know of the open ocean beyond the great sea (which we call the Mediterranean) - nor that there is land to the west. And no Greek ship, had it passed into the Atlantic, could safely have reached America. But Tennyson (like his readers), of course, does know there is land here, and that the voyage is possible, if dangerous.

Ulysses wonders if he may find again the great hero, Achilles, whom he has not seen, since his death when Troy fell. Many readers think that Tennyson identifies "the great Achilles" with his own lost friend, Arthur Hallam.

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Notes on the poem

• The Hyades were the daughters of the giant Atlas, changed into the cluster of stars (in the constellation of Taurus) that bears their name. According to legend, when these stars rise with the sun, then rain will follow - so for the sailor king Ulysses they are a sign of wet weather.
• Troy was a city in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Paris, a prince of Troy, abducted Helen, wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, led an army of rulers and warriors from all the cities and islands of Greece, which sailed to Troy to bring Helen back by force. The long struggle that followed, recorded in Homer's Iliad, we call the Trojan War.
• Achilles was the greatest of all the Greek warriors. He quarrelled with Agamemnon, and refused to fight. Agamemnon persuaded Achilles' best friend, Patroclus, to fight against Hector, the Trojan champion. When Hector killed Patroclus, Achilles decided to fight again, and killed Hector. Achilles mother, the nymph Thetis, had dipped her baby son in the river Styx, to make him invulnerable. But she held him by his heel. And when the Greeks finally stormed Troy, Paris fired an arrow that struck Achilles in the heel, wounding him fatally.
• The illustration in the AQA Anthology is a vague outline of a sailing ship that Tennyson might have seen in the mid 19th century - a barque or windjammer perhaps. It might be appropriate to Whitman's Patroling Barnegat, but is certainly nothing like any vessel that Odysseus might have sailed in, almost three thousand years ago.

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Ideas for studying the poem

The sequel

What happens on the voyage? Using clues in the poem or your own ideas, write an account of the journey. You can use one or more forms for this, such as:

• the ship's log;
• the script for a TV or radio play based on the voyage (or a documentary broadcast, as if the voyage really happened);
• a series of letters from Ulysses to his wife or son.

Travelling hopefully or arriving?

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote (half a century later than this poem), "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive". Ulysses says something similar here. C.S. Lewis claims that Stevenson is wrong because, unless we expect to arrive, we would not travel with any hope.

Which view do you agree with? Perhaps neither is absolutely right, but each reflects the attitude of the person who says it. Do you want to keep travelling or to arrive?

Loading the ship

The poem is not at all concerned with the practical details of the voyage - as if Ulysses can leave that to his men. What things might Ulysses need to take for such a voyage? Make a list of at least ten things - you may wish to illustrate them - and give reasons for taking them. (You can include modern things, or, if you are ambitious, only take things that would have been around in very ancient times.)

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Oliver Goldsmith: The Village Schoolmaster

About the poet

Oliver Goldsmith (?1728-74) was born in Ireland. (We are not sure of the year, as it is missing from the record, in the family bible, of his birth - but it must have been before 1730.) He began to attend Trinity College, Dublin, where he was unhappy. In 1752 an uncle paid for him to study medicine at Edinburgh. In 1756 he became an apothecary's assistant in London. For most of his life, he was very poor - a condition not helped by his compulsive gambling. He became a friend of the great Dr. Johnson (poet, philosopher, critic and author of the first authoritative English dictionary) who helped him in his career, and of the artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Goldsmith eventually achieved success in prose fiction (with his 1766 novel The Vicar of Wakefield), in drama (with his 1773 play She Stoops to Conquer) and in poetry. The Deserted Village (1770) is the most successful of his many poems.

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About the poem

This is not really a whole poem but an extract from Goldsmith's long poem The Deserted Village, which runs to 430 lines. In the opening line of the complete poem, Goldsmith names the village as "sweet Auburn" - but the original on which it is modelled was, according to the poet's sister, Lissoy, in County Westmeath, Ireland.

This passage is a portrait of a teacher at the village school. The poet is looking back on a time when the village was lively and active whereas now no one lives there. (Goldsmith's readers knew this as a reality - changes in land ownership, coupled with new job opportunities in machine production, had caused people to move from the country to the cities, leaving many villages without people.) In doing so, Goldsmith represents the past as a kind of golden age - a better, kinder and happier time, certainly. Here he expresses admiration for the village teacher. He lists his personal qualities and gives details of the master's learning. But above all he shows how the schoolmaster belonged in his place - having the affection and respect of the whole community.

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The poem in detail

Goldsmith identifies the site of the school, in the way he might point it out to a visitor, as beside a fence ("straggling" perhaps, because no-one maintains it now). "Noisy mansion" is partly ironic - the school building would be modest, not really a "mansion" (a luxurious house) except to the teacher and scholars, who would be used to tiny cottages or hovels. The teacher is outwardly strict, and the scholars learn to respond to his moods (some things do not change much). But he is really kind. Among his accomplishments are literacy ("he could write") and numeracy ("and cipher"). He could measure distances on charts, calculate dates and forecast tides. People believe that he can "gauge" (survey land or estimate its area) - but we do not know if the belief is justified. Most impressive, the village parson recognized his ability to argue. The less educated country people were full of wonder that "one small head could carry" so much. To the reader, his learning will seem quite limited, but also not especially academic, as we would now call it. Much of what the teacher knows or is rumoured to know is of immediate practical usefulness - like working out dates, tides and land areas.

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The poet's method

The form of this poem is very distinctive. It uses the iambic pentameter line, arranged in rhyming couplets, in a long sequence of the kind that we call discursive - it moves from one mini-subject to another, in a carefully-organized whole. This is a popular form for most of the 18th century, though Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Middle Ages, used it most effectively. But with it goes something else - a style that is formed out of a very specialised vocabulary, as well as distinctive kinds of word order. Goldsmith and his contemporaries mostly shared the view that poetry - being a special kind of writing - needed its own distinctive style or diction, as they called it. This meant avoiding certain words that were considered common or vulgar, and using instead more suitable words, ideally from the classical languages of Greek and Latin, such as "rustics" for country people. It also meant putting adverbs or adverb phrases before the verbs they describe - as Goldsmith does when he writes of the pupils "Full well they laughed". And it meant sometimes putting the object before the verb, as in "Lands he could measure".

The other feature is a very delicate irony. Goldsmith is sincere in his admiration, and he does think that the teacher is a good and worthy man. But he reveals that this object of the villagers' wonder was really quite limited in his achievements. The villagers think it marvellous that he can write and count, for example - but this tells us more about them than about him. The great importance of the parson as a judge of ability appears, too. (If the parson says it, then it must be true.) Most revealing is the way that the schoolmaster impressed people in argument - by using "words of learned length and thundering sound". (This could almost be a criticism of poetic diction, too.) That is, he did not win by logic or reason, but through using words that baffled the hearer. There are still people who find this impressive, but nowadays we are often unconvinced by those who hide a weak argument behind impressive-sounding words. Moreover, the fact that most of the village people seem to remain ignorant rustics may mean that the schoolmaster has never succeeded in passing on much of his learning to the scholars.

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We also note the formal use of contrast - one pair of lines beginning "Full well" shows how the scholars would know when to laugh (even pretending to find his jokes funny), while the next pair shows how they knew when he was in a more severe mood.

You will find many lines in which the word order differs from that in natural speech or non-literary prose: Goldsmith has "a man severe he was", where we would naturally say "he was a severe man". We find the specialized diction in "yon" ("yon...fence" is "that fence yonder or over there"), "boding tremblers" (pupils shaking with foreboding), "dismal" (an overstatement), "aught" (for anything) and "cipher" (for doing arithmetic).

The portrait of the village idealizes life in the country. As people moved into cities to take up work in factories, we can suppose that they had reasons for doing so. Given that this life was quite harsh, too, it is hard to believe that they were leaving behind a very happy existence - in truth they would, in the country, have worked long hours, for poor pay amid the most basic of circumstances. But so long as ordinary country people remained illiterate, or if literate, had no way to publish their own stories, then well-meaning people like Goldsmith could speak for them and make things seem better than they really were. (Some of these educated middle class writers are more ready to tell the truth, like Jonathan Swift and William Blake, both of whom in different ways, revealed the misery and harshness of the lives of common people. Later in the next (19th) century, as literacy spread, many writers would find ways to describe the plight of ordinary working people.

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Ideas for studying the poem

Inspecting the schoolmaster

In Britain today, teachers (like many workers) find their performance being measured by other people (like school managers and governors or inspectors). It seems clear that Goldsmith thinks highly of the village schoolmaster. But how well would he do in an inspection?

Using evidence in the poem, write an evaluation of his work - looking at things like

• his subject knowledge,
• his classroom management,
• his teaching styles,
• his relations with the pupils, and
• his ability to help them achieve their own success.

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Role models

Goldsmith presents a picture of an ordered society in which everyone knows his or her place, and most people live up to the expectations of those around them. (There probably never was such a society anywhere, but the idea has haunted mankind for thousands of years at least.) And in this happy village, the schoolmaster occupies an honoured position.

Who are people that you most admire in the society in which you live? Why is this? Are your role models those people who look after themselves and pursue things like wealth and fame or do you prefer those who put things back into society rather than take from it?

Talk or write about this, either by referring to real named individuals, or to groups and categories of people - like police officers, fire officers, teachers, nurses, van drivers, shop assistants and so on. You might like to give a score out of ten, or place them in some kind of order to show how much or little you respect what they do or stand for.

Change and continuity

In some ways this portrait from the 18th century would still ring true to school pupils in the 21st century - while other things have changed massively. Look closely at the poem and make a list of similarities and differences between Goldsmith's Village Schoolmaster and any teachers that you have known.

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Alfred Tennyson: The Eagle

About the poem

The Eagle was published in 1851. Tennyson subtitles it as a Fragment - at a mere six lines, it is certainly a very short poem. In it the poet depicts the eagle in extreme terms as a powerful force of nature. Modern readers, used to air travel or to seeing images and films recorded at altitude, may find the viewpoint almost familiar - but Tennyson, who lived before the age of the aeroplane, imagines this vividly, without ever having seen it. He must surely, however, have visited some area with very high mountains, in order to know things like the way the sea appears to move slowly when seen from a great height.

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The poem in detail

The poem tells us of a series of things the eagle does. We see him clinging to the mountain crag, high up near the sun and surrounded by the blue sky. He looks down on the sea, moving slowly below him, still watches, then - which is perhaps the point of the poem - falls like lightning on his unspecified prey.

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The poet's method

The poem, though short, is on a grand scale in its vocabulary - in six lines, Tennyson mentions the sun, the azure world (presumably the eagle's blue domain of the sky), the sea, a crag and a mountain - finally likening the eagle to the lightning (the thunderbolt - the bolt, that is, that comes with the thunder).

The bird of prey is presented anthropomorphically (in human terms) - never "it" or "the eagle" (outside the title) but always "he", and the talons are "crooked hands", rather than claws.

The poem is made up of a series of verbs or verb phrases that depict the eagle's action - "he clasps the crag...he stands...he watches...he falls".

The poem is written in iambic metre but with four feet in each line (tetrameter) - and there are only two rhymes, one for all three line-endings in each of the two stanzas. In a longer poem, this might be irritating, but in such a short piece it is not too obvious to the reader.

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Ideas for studying the poem

More fragments

Choose some other subjects from the natural world (animals, plants, weather features) and write short verse or pose descriptions, perhaps adapting Tennyson's style.

Why is the eagle "he"?

Does Tennyson simply use "he" for convenience? Or does the poem only work if we suppose that the eagle is a male? Change the pronoun to "she" and read it several times. Does this make a difference to how we read the poem? If so, what is this? This is a good subject for discussion in a small group - to see if our ideas of power and majesty are in any way connected to our ideas of make and female, and how far this applies not just to human society, but to animals.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins: Inversnaid

About the poet

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was the eldest of eight children of a marine insurer. Gerard was educated at Highgate School, then at Oxford, where he was converted to Roman Catholicism, and became a Jesuit priest. He studied theology in Wales, and then served as a parish priest in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow and Chesterfield. Hopkins taught at Stonyhurst School from 1882 to 84, when he was appointed Professor of Greek at University College, Dublin. He kept this post till his early death of typhoid fever. In his lifetime he published very little of his poetry, and was not well known until later. In 1918, his friend and literary executor, the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges, brought out an edition of Hopkins's poems, which met with immediate success. He is regarded as a great technical innovator, chiefly for his use of metre - though the form associated with him (he calls it "sprung rhythm") is found in Old and Middle English poetry.

Hopkins writes with a sense of total faith in God. Unlike Wordsworth, who seeks to explore his own mind, Hopkins seeks ways in his poetry to praise God, and to celebrate God's glory in the creation of the natural world. He only introduces himself into the poems in order to address God or consider the divine purpose.

Hopkins explained his views by the idea of inscape (a word of his invention), which means something like the divine pattern and underlying form and oneness of natural things. When one sees into this underlying order and unity, then one experiences what Hopkins calls instress. This may seem a strange idea to modern man, but some of Wordsworth's poetry reveals a similar thought, while the Biblical Psalms repeatedly tell us how God's glory is found in nature.

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About the poem

Hopkins gives the date of this poem as September 1881. It celebrates the wild beauty of Inversnaid in the Scottish Highlands, which overlooks Loch Lomond. In three stanzas, Hopkins describes the features of the place, then in the final stanza he makes a plea for keeping the wild places. He has asked the question of what the world would be without them - a question he does not answer, though he suggests that the world would be less wonderful than it is, without these wilderness places - an idea which (perhaps for slightly different reasons) has a strong appeal in our own times.

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The poem in detail

The first stanza describes a burn or stream which is brown - perhaps because it is shaded ("darksome") and perhaps because it is so turbulent that there is silt in it - till it goes over a waterfall ("roaring down" the "rollrock highroad") and falling "home" to the lake below.

In the second stanza, Hopkins notes the contrast of the delicate froth over the seething water ("broth") of a dark whirlpool - as if light and airy things can survive in a place that would be fatal to man. And the third stanza describes the dew sprinkled on the hillsides through which the burn passes, where one can see tufts of heather and fern and the berries on the ash tree.

In the final stanza Hopkins asks the question, What would the world be without the wild places? (We sometimes call such questions that are asked for effect, but without an expectation of an answer, "rhetorical" - because they are common in rhetoric or public speaking). In place of an answer he makes a repeated plea for them to be left, leading to the triumphant wish for them to live long - a statement we are used to hearing made about a person, but perhaps not about "weeds" and "wilderness".

The poem is consistent in that the poet refers only to natural things or features of the Highland landscape, and he does not introduce himself into the scene, other than in the direct appeal to the reader in the questions of the last stanza.

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The final line of the second stanza is puzzling. Perhaps he sees the "pitchblack" pool as an image of absolute "Despair" (almost like Hell). But it may be quite the reverse, that the pool, paradoxically, is so dark, in the frown (shadow) of the fells, that it drowns "Despair" itself. Certainly most of the poem shows nature as a source of inspiration and optimism.

Hopkins explains some of the vocabulary in a notebook, saying that "coop" means "enclosed space" or "water cooped up", while "comb" means "water combing freely over stones". Of the words he does not explain, a "burn" (a Scots noun) is a brook. "Twindles" is a portmanteau word (it mixes several existing words) from "twists", "twitches" and "dwindles". "Degged" is a dialect term for sprinkled, while a "brae" (another Scots word) is a hillside or bank. "Heathpacks" are packs or patches of heather. And "flitches" are clumps or tufts (here of fern), though the noun usually means a slice or sheet of something, and is most familiar as a cut of bacon (the side of a pig). "Beadbonny" is one of Hopkins' inventions - presumably meaning that the ash tree is "bonny" (pretty) with beads (the red berries on the mountain ash).

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Perhaps more difficult is the "windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth". This is something light enough for the wind to blow it - either literal froth on the pool, or perhaps a wind-borne seed. But why “fawn”? Is this a reference to the animal (the young of the deer), that one might see in this Highland location? Does the fawn produce froth of some kind?

Hilary Read, a teacher, suggests a more straightforward explanation, which seems plausible:

“Isn't 'fawn' simply referring to the colour? The frothing water is brownish. Hopkins uses a hyphen because it isn't just froth which is fawn: the colour is integral to the froth, part of its uniqueness and inscape.”

Whatever the source of the term, "fawn-froth" suggests the lightness and delicacy of this foam, teetering on the brink of the fearsome waterfall.

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The poet's method

Hopkins is well known for his use of sprung rhythm. (This has a regular number of stressed syllables in any line, but allows for more variation in the unstressed syllables.) But Inversnaid uses a more conventional anapaestic metre. The four-line stanzas (quatrains) each have a basic AABB rhyme scheme. One line has internal rhyme:

"In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam..."

(Where the first rhyme word comes at a break in the middle of the line, it is called Leonine rhyme, after a 12th century Latin poet called Leo, who used this device.)

The poem uses interesting sound effects, and Hopkins surely intends it to be read aloud or "heard" with the mind's ear. It is quite difficult to read aloud as it has many tongue-twisting passages to challenge the reader. We find this mostly in assonance and alliteration - repeating of both vowel and consonant sounds.

The argument of the poem is simply shown in its structure - three stanzas of description, followed by one in which the poet reflects on the value of natural beauty.

But the most obvious technical feature that marks Hopkins' verse is his vocabulary. This is not the special lexicon of poetic diction, but a readiness to play with words and invent new ones - relying on the sound to suggest the meaning. For example, we do not need to know what "twindles" means (in a dictionary sense) to imagine the froth on the pool that Hopkins describes in the second stanza. This is just as well, because we will not find "twindles" in most dictionaries. Other inventions include "rollrock", "fawn-froth", "heathpacks" and "beadbonny".

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Hopkins does not only invent words, but also uses dialect terms, particularly those spoken by people living near Inversnaid, like "burn" and "brae" or includes them in his own made-up words, as he does with "heath" and "bonny".

The poem contains many striking images, most of which we can read literally. But Hopkins is a devout Catholic, who finds heaven (and maybe hell) all around him, so the image of the fawn-froth falling over the waterfall's edge and into the pitchblack pool may well be intended as a metaphor for the human soul. The froth is almost nothing, yet it can survive the destructive torrent and the pool of Despair.

At the end of the poem Hopkins praises "wildness and wet". The whole poem celebrates the life-giving properties of water, which is often a symbol of life in the poetry of the Bible. It may seem a dangerous and destructive force as it plunges over the waterfall, but in reality all natural life depends on the rivers and streams and pools.

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Ideas for studying the poem

Performing the poem

This is a very suitable text for dramatic performance. It is easy to learn by heart or to learn for reading from a script. A pair or small group could share the lines and provide suitable sound FX - using voices only or musical instruments. If your school is near a fast-flowing stream or waterfall, it might be possible to do this outdoors - though this could be dangerous. More sensibly, pupils could make an audiotape, CD or digital recording for a computer to record the performance, or use presentation graphics software (such as PowerPoint™) to accompany a performance of the poem.

Making a glossary

This poem is full of strange words and phrases - things Hopkins makes up, or familiar words used in unfamiliar senses. Working with one or more friends (in this way you share the work), make a simple guide or glossary to explain what these terms mean.

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Using visual input

• Use a highlighter (on printed text or electronic text) to show things like alliteration, assonance, and other sound FX.
• Add captions to explain unusual vocabulary.
• Prepare a storyboard for a short film to illustrate the poem or for which the spoken text of poem would provide the soundtrack.
• Make a poster to show the important images and scenes presented in the poem.

Creative writing

Find out about Inversnaid (the place, not the poem) by researching Web sites. Using the information that you find, try to write one or more of the following:

• a travel guide to the Trossachs and Loch Lomond;
• the script for a 30-second TV or radio advert for the Inversnaid Hotel;
• a single-page leaflet giving safety advice to schoolchildren visiting the Highlands;
• your own poem about, or prose description of, a spectacular and beautiful natural place.

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John Clare: Sonnet - "I love to see the summer..."

About the poet

John Clare (1793-1864) was a farm labourer from Northamptonshire. He had only the most basic formal education, but taught himself by reading everything he could find. He spent two years (1812-14) in the Northamptonshire Militia, and worked as a gardener at Burghley House near Stamford, while writing poems for his first collection. This appeared in 1820, under the title Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. To promote sales, the title page gave the author as "John Clare a Northampton Peasant". Like the great Scots poet, Robert Burns, and unlike almost every other published poet of the time, Clare really knew from experience what it was like to live and work in the country. Clare published further collections but these did not sell as well, as the novelty of the author's background was no longer helpful. In 1823, Clare began to suffer from mental illness. He spent four fairly happy years at Dr. Allen's asylum in High Beech, Essex, after which he spent half a year at liberty. In 1841 he was placed in the General Lunatic Asylum in Northampton. He received kind treatment, and continued his writing. Clare is not regarded as a great poet, but he knows far more about the natural world than more celebrated writers. He has a positive view of nature, but does not idealize it, because he knows the reality of the labourer's toil.

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About the poem

The poem is delightfully naïve - John Clare writes "I love..." as any primary school child might say, and lists the things that he loves to see. The poem is more or less a list of images - things that a country person would see. You can still see most of them today - but you need to get out of your car. The view is very much a close-up look at nature. We may not find this in poetry so much as we once did - but it has a lot in common with natural history broadcasts for TV, especially those where hidden cameras can record the things which the countryman used to have to look for patiently.

Clare describes the scene in a pond or small lake, where reeds grow and waterfowl nest. Where Gerard Manley Hopkins' Inversnaid shows water in a violent and energetic form, this poem shows still water, teeming with life. It is wild, in the sense that all sorts of animals and plants live there, but this means that it can support human life, too - Clare would see the waterfowl as food, the rushes as building material and the hay grass as food to support animal husbandry. Hopkins goes to the country, both in Wales and Scotland, as a very observant tourist - full of wonder at what he sees. Clare lives in the country and knows it in the way a gardener or natural historian does - and he knows where to look to see the things he loves.

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The poem in detail

The first line of the poem is very simple and unremarkable - almost a general introduction, before the details appear. The first of these is the likening of the cloud to the wool sack - when we read this phrase we may at once think of the very famous Woolsack on which the Lord Chancellor sits, but Clare is thinking of the untreated wool that fills the sacks in a wool market - a sight you can still see in his part of the world. The third line is also rather vague, but then we get examples. These are the golden marsh marigolds, the white water lilies and the clumps of reed. Clare notes that they "rustle like a wind shook wood" - this reminds us that the reeds are large and sturdy plants, growing as high as some trees. ("Wind shook" may also reveal Clare's lack of education - he uses the non-standard grammar of "shook", as Elvis Presley does in the rock song All Shook Up, where we would expect the past participle "shaken". )

Clare may disregard standard verb forms but he does know that moorhens make floating nests out of flag irises (a floating nest gives less opportunity to predators, like rats or foxes, that might eat the eggs or the chicks). He enjoys the sight of the willow that overhangs the lake - perhaps the species we call weeping willow. And, looking at the long grass that will be cut for hay, he notices the insects that fly around it - imagining that they are happy. This leads him to think of the insects that "play" in the lake.

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The poem shows a childlike sense of innocent pleasure in very simple natural things. Perhaps in the modern world they are too simple for us - after a few minutes we find them boring. But we may envy those who can find this simple delight. If you don't know the country, you may find these explanations helpful (ignore them if you know this stuff already):

• Mare blobs are flowers. The common name is marsh marigold (caltha palustris is the Latin botanical name) - and older dialect names are mare blobs, mare blebs and water blobs. (Mare here is presumably the Latin word for water as in marine or Weston-super-Mare).
• The drain is not a hole in the ground covered with an iron grating. It is a large drainage ditch or dyke, which would carry water away from the fields for most of the year, perhaps drying out in late summer, but suitable for marsh plants like the marigolds.
• The moorhen's flag nest is a floating nest, built out of the stems of the yellow flag iris - a plant that commonly grows around the edges of ponds.
• Hay grass is allowed to grow to its full height, before it is cut, dried and stored to provide food for animals in winter when they cannot graze. (Do not confuse it with straw, the thicker stems of cereal plants. Straw is not suitable for food, and is used to provide bedding for animals - and for people in past times and some societies today.)

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The poet's method

John Clare is a technically unsophisticated writer. He is able to use the iambic pentameter line but in a mechanical and repetitive way - so we find the simple opening used again and again: "I love to see" (twice), "I like", "I love", "And" (three times) and "Where" (twice). If you read down the opening words, you can see how he does this. As set out in the AQA Anthology, the poem appears as one continuous sentence. Dr. John Goodridge has calculated that 192 of Clare's poems begin with "I", 52 with "I love" and 6 with "I loved".

This is not a conventional sonnet of either the type called Petrarchan (after the Italian writer Francesco Petrarca, 1304-74) which is divided into groups of eight and six lines (the octave and sestet) or the Shakespearean sonnet, with its twelve lines, followed by a concluding couplet. Instead the whole poem is a series of seven couplets. Many critics would insist that there is more to a sonnet than simply having fourteen lines.

Clare does not imagine animals and plants, but records them as he sees them. He uses the common country dialect names - sometimes these are still in use ("water lilies") and sometimes the name has passed out of use ("Mare blobs" or "flag", on its own, where we now say "flag-iris").

There are occasional metaphors, but the images come from Clare's own experience, as when he compares clouds to sacks of wool. And the one simile likens the rushes to a wood, shaken by wind - so Clare compares like with like. Some of the images are anthropomorphic (attributing human qualities or behaviour to non-human things), so the willow leans and stands, the insects have happy wings and the beetles play in the lake.

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Ideas for studying the poem

Natural history in the poem

Using the information in the poem, write a simple description of the natural environment, the plants and flowers, which Clare depicts in it. Or write your own poem about the things you "love to see" in summer in an environment that you know well. Alternatively, write a sequel to Clare's poem, describing what you would see in the same place at some other time of year.

Nature is boring

Is this poem suitable for young readers? Or is it the case that a close interest in nature comes, for most of us, only when we are older? How do you feel about the things that Clare describes?

Respecting nature

Do we value the natural environment properly or do we not care about it? Look at the following list of statements and decide which ones you most agree or disagree with:

• the countryside is boring - I much prefer clubs, discos, burger bars and cinemas;
• the country is a good place to build more houses, shops and car parks;
• it's OK to leave rubbish after a picnic - other people or nature can clean up after you;
• the best thing to do with wild birds and animals is shoot them and eat them;
• it makes sense to farm with agro-chemicals - you get rid of weeds and have a bigger crop;
• I don't need to go looking at wild birds and plants when I can watch them on wildlife broadcasts on TV.

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Can I print this guide and photocopy it?

This guide is free for individual users - for example, teachers or students working from home - in any part of the world. You can print out the guide, but it is not ideal for printing and photocopying, and may run to many more pages than you expect.

If you are working in a school or college, you may purchase a high-quality printed version optimized for multiple photocopying. The cost of the printed version includes permission for unlimited reproduction within your institution - if you expect to make multiple copies, this will probably save on your bulk photocopying and printing costs. To obtain the printed guide, contact:

• ZigZag Education and Computing Centre Publications
• Greenway Business Centre
• Doncaster Road
• Bristol
• BS10 5PY
• Tel: +44 (0)117 950 3199

Click on the link to go to the ZigZag Education Web site:

• www.zigzageducation.co.uk

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Please acknowledge my authorship by giving the URL of any pages you use, and/or include the © copyright symbol. Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Thank you.

© Andrew Moore, 2002; Contact me

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