The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Sample Questions:
- How does Tennyson establish the majesty and isolation of the eagle in the opening lines?
- Analyze how Tennyson evokes both strength and fragility in his portrayal of the eagle.
- Examine how the description of the eagle's motion captures the observers' awe.
- Discuss how Tennyson brings a sudden yet complete closure to the moment.
Pike by Ted Hughes
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads -
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards
Or hung in the water like a blue-black marble.
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four, and four and a half:
Red fry to them - suddenly a flush of fear,
A shadow, a fin, and the flash of a jaw,
What might possibly be the same Pike
That had somehow survived all this, fangs at the ready.
They spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long,
High-backed, early-warning,
Of hunger not to be denied.
But death had seized them by the heart.
It was the spare pike that lay in the willow-herb -
One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice-lock gripped it.
They lived in a murk of their own making,
Death, death, death, death swimming.
For who could know their ancient coldness?
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast
But silently cast and fished
With hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
Sample Questions:
- How does Hughes create an initial sense of beauty and threat in the description of the pike?
- Analyze how Hughes blends fear and admiration in his depiction of the pike's nature.
- Examine how the speaker's careful, almost reverent tone reveals his deeper fascination with the
pike.
- Discuss how Hughes closes the poem with a lingering sense of unease.
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Sample Questions:
- How does Heaney set a joyful and innocent mood at the beginning of the poem?
- Analyze how Heaney contrasts pleasure and disappointment as the berries spoil.
- Examine how the children's actions and reactions reveal their emotional connection to nature.
- Discuss how Heaney concludes the poem with a tone of inevitable loss.
The Horses by Edwin Muir
Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on a sudden the air should be filled with noise
And the sound of engines, we would not listen,
We would not let them in.
We would be sure of it, now.
Sure of a silence that was not the absence of sound
But a positive thing, a presence,
Something to be treasured.
Then came the horses.
They came like the first animals down to the drinking-place
From the green underworld of woods,
They came gently, they did not break anything,
But snuffing the delicate child of the air
With their mild nostrils, drawing the air
In and out with prodigious gulps and blows,
Finding the humans strange in their aspect,
But stirring no fear in their mild eyes.
They came, and they did not go away.
They stayed with us, contented,
That had been bred to do us injury;
That we had sold for money and could not buy back.
They showed us the way,
And we, who thought ourselves so mighty, lay down
And let them lead us, slowly, home and home,
To the long vacant fields, broken ploughs,
Fallen fences, and broken homes.
Gentle, mild and powerful,
They came and found us in the bleak weather
Of that destroyed world.
So we stood, sometimes crying, watching the horses;
Watching the horses with their mild eyes
Drawing after them the battered carts,
Slowly, slowly, and gently, they moved, they moved.
Our life became theirs,
Our breathing became the breathing of horses.
In the evenings we heard them in the stables,
Low booming of their breathing,
As they lay and brooded on our silence.
Sample Questions:
- How does Muir establish an atmosphere of silence and waiting in the opening stanzas?
- Analyze how Muir mixes fear and hope through the arrival of the horses.
- Examine how the humans' stillness and muted awe reflect their deep fascination with the horses.
- Discuss how Muir ends the poem with a feeling of renewal or rebirth.
The Tyger by William Blake
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Sample Questions:
- How does Blake establish a tone of both wonder and terror in the opening lines?
- Analyze how Blake combines fear and admiration in his portrayal of the Tyger.
- Examine how the speaker's repeated questions show his obsession and amazement.
- Discuss how Blake provides a complex, unresolved closure to the poem's central question.
