POETRY FLASHCARDS

A WIFE IN LONDON
(LOVE/WAR)
-An ironic poem about a woman who finds out her husband has died then receives a letter from him telling her ho he is looking forward to seeing her again.
-The routine is the same each day - nothing has changed.
-Dark, mysterious imagery suggests loss of life & happiness.
'He - has fallen - in the far South Land'
'Page-full of his hoped return/...And of new love that they would learn'
LINK: The Manhunt

DEATH OF A NATURALIST
(TIME/CHILDHOOD)
-'Death' describes a loss of childhood innocence.
-Lots of juxtaposition of calm and grotesque imagery - 'warm thick slobber'.
-Tone change between stanzas - growing up and maturing.
-Reflecting on bad memories - sort of the opposite of 'The Prelude'.
'But best of all was the warm thick slobber/Of frogspawn'
'The great slime kings/Were gathered there for vengeance'
LINK: The Prelude

HAWK ROOSTING
(POWER/NATURE)
-Describes how a hawk abuses his absolute power over the forest - arrogant and narcissistic.
-Metaphor for Hitler's reign of terror in Germany - overused his status.
-The hawk is presented as a god, making it seem omnipotent and immovable.
-Has power over life and death - 'allotment of death'
'It took the whole of Creation/To produce my foot, my each feather'
'My eye has permitted no change./I am going to keep things like this.'
LINK: Ozymandias

TO AUTUMN
(NATURE)
-Love letter personifying Autumn as a woman.
-Summer is plentiful, and time seems to stand still.
-Autumn could represent how Keats was nearing the end of his life - he might have known he had TB.
-Lots of sensory description - bringing you there with him.
'Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep./Drows'd with the fume of poppies'
'Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;/And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn'
LINK: She Walks in Beauty

AFTERNOONS
(TIME/NATURE)
-Dark satire about society - melancholy undertones.
-Every day seems the same.
-Children push their parents to the side and chain them up in their lives - they only live for their children.
-Love fades with age - afternoon represents middle age (similar with 'To Autumn').
'In the hollows of afternoons/Young mothers assemble/At swing and sandpit/Setting free their children.'
'Something is pushing them/To the side of their own lives.'
LINK: As Imperceptibly as Grief

DULCE ET DECORUM EST
(WAR)
-Cynical and anti-war - makes use of the phrase 'Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori', meaning 'how sweet it is to die for your country'.
-Describes a gas attack and how one man dies horrifically.
-Owen thought that war was a waste of lives and affected too many innocent people.
-He turned the phrase on its head by making it seem like a dishonourable death.
'deaf even to the hoots/Of gas shells dropping softly behind'
'He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning'
LINK: The Manhunt

OZYMANDIAS
(POWER/TIME)
-Uses an ancient ruler as a metaphor for the ruling classes of the time.
-Everything eventually succumbs to time and is destroyed - nothing is eternal.
-Even the mightiest of rulers will fall.
-Lots of imagery of decay - only fragments remain.
''My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
'Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
LINK: Hawk Roosting

MAMETZ WOOD
(WAR)
-Describes the digging up of the bodies of Welsh soldiers who fought in Belgium.
-Written many years after the war - view in hindsight.
-Ideas of wasted youth - images of fragility show how immature the soldiers were.
-Soldiers lives were short and underappreciated - they died for no reason.
'a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm'
'As if the notes they had sung/have only now, with this unearthing, slipped from their absent tongues.'
LINK: The Manhunt

THE PRELUDE
(CHILDHOOD)
-Looking back on fond childhood memories of ice skating with friends.
-Wordsworth was young and carefree - everything was exciting.
-Becomes melancholy - he is alone, but he doesn't understand the feeling.
-Longs to return to that time.
'All shod with steel,/We hiss'd along the polished ice, in games/Confederate'
'Into the tumult sent an alien sound/Of melancholy, not unnoticed'
LINK: Death of a Naturalist