WJEC/Eduqas English Literature GCSE Poetry Anthology

The Manhunt - Quotes

- "After the first phase, / after passionate nights and intimate days, // only then would he let me trace": 'only then' repeated

- "blown hinge of his lower jaw"

- "the parachute silk of his punctured lung"

- "feel the hurt / of his grazed heart"

- "sweating, unexploded mine / buried deep in his mind"

The Manhunt - Context

- Written for a Channel 4 Documentary

- Speaker is Laura, wife of a soldier who served in the Bosnian War and was discharged due to injury and depression, named Eddie

The Manhunt - Structure and Form

- Two-line stanzas: fractured

- Some rhyming

- Dramatic monologue

- Enjambment

Sonnet 43 - Quotes

- "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"

- "I love thee to the breadth and depth and height / My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight / For the ends of Being and ideal Grace"

- "I love thee with the passion put to use / In my old griefs": volta

- "if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death"

Sonnet 43 - Context

- Part of a wider collection of sonnets addressed to Browning's husband, Robert Browning: show how he 'saves' her from her opressive father

- Browning suffered spinal and head pain from childhood

Sonnet 43 - Structure and Form

- Petrarchan Sonnet: octave, sestet and volta

- Shift to focus on past and then future with the sestet

London - Quotes

- "I wander thro' each charter'd street

- "Marks of weakness, marks of woe"

- "every cry of every Man [...] the mind-forg'd manacles I hear"

- "every black'ning Church appalls"

- "the youthful Harlot's curse [...] blights with plagues the Marriage hearse"

London - Context

- Blake lived in 18th century London: Industrial Revolution (late 18th and early 19th century)

- Blake lost faith in religion due to the Church refusing to help homeless children

London - Structure and Form

- Iambic tetrameter

- Enjambment

- 4 quatrains: regular ABAB rhyme scheme

- Each quatrain focuses on a different aspect of his journey

The Soldier - Quotes

- "If I should die, think only this of me:"

- "A body of England's, breathing English air, / Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home"

- "A pulse in the eternal mind"

- "English heaven"

The Soldier - Context

- Written in 1914, before Brooke experienced war; later became an officer

- Used as a propaganda piece but not written for this reason

The Soldier - Structure and Form

- Sonnet

- Octave uses Shakespearean rhyme scheme and sestet uses Petrarchan: British vs Italian

She Walks in Beauty - Quotes

- "She walks in beauty, like the night, / Of cloudless climes and starry skies"

- "One shade the more, one ray the less / Had half impaired the nameless grace"

- "A mind at peace with all below, / A heart whose love is innocent!"

She Walks in Beauty - Context

- Possibly inspired by a woman, that he met at a party the night before

- Romantic era, which placed more emphasis on the heart and feelings than on the head and thoughts

She Walks in Beauty - Structure and Form

- Iambic tetrameter

- Consistent ABABAB rhyme scheme

- Enjambment: slight contrast to steady rhyme scheme + beat

Living Space - Quotes

- "There are just not enough / straight lines. That / is the problem."

- "whole structure leans dangerously / towards the miraculous"

- "someone has squeezed / a living space"

- "eggs in a wire basket [...] hung out over the dark edge / of a slanted universe"

Living Space - Context

- Revealed later that the poem is set in Mumbai

- Dharker lives between London and Mumbai

Living Space - Structure and Form

- Stanzas used enjambment

- No rhyme scheme

- Stanza 2 is short, as if squeezed between stanzas 1 and 3

As Imperceptibly as Grief - Quotes

- "As imperceptibly as Grief / The Summer lapsed away"

- "A Quietness distilled"

- "The Morning foreign shone"

- "harrowing Grace"

- "Summer made her light escape"

As Imperceptibly as Grief - Context

- Lived a very lonely, isolated life

- Final version written the year Dickinson's mother died

- Poem can be interpreted as about Dickinson's emotional struggles caused by the death of her mother

As Imperceptibly as Grief - Structure and Form

- Blank verse

- No stanzas

- Reflects unordered nature of thoughts and feelings

Cozy Apologia - Quotes

- "I could pick anything and think of you"

- "There you'll be [...] chain mail glinting, to set me free"

- "post-post modern age is all business [...] take-no-risks"

- "hurricane is nudging up the coast, / Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host / Of daydreams [...] Of teenage crushes on worthless boys"

- "We're content, but fall short of Divine"

- "I fill this stolen time with you"

Cozy Apologia - Context

- Speaker is Rita Dove

- Poem is dedicated to her husband Fred

- Hurricane Floyd occurred off the coast of the USA in 1999- past loves

Cozy Apologia - Structure and Form

- Likely first-person narrative

- Three 10-line stanzas

- Stanza 1 is made up of 5 rhyming couplets

- Rhyme scheme breaks down in stanza 2 as storm arrives

- New rhyme scheme begun to emerge by stanza 3

- Some enjambment: flowing of thoughts

Valentine - Quotes

- "Not a red rose or a satin heart."

- "I give you an onion. / It is a moon wrapped in brown paper."

- "It will blind you with tears / like a lover."

- "I am trying to be truthful.": isolated stanza

- "Not a cute card or a kissogram.": isolated stanza

- "possessive and faithful / as we are, / for as long as we are."

- "Lethal. / Its scent will cling to your fingers, / cling to your knife."

Valentine - Context

- Poem refers to Valentine's Day, when people traditionally give gifts to their partner, especially roses

- Valentine's Day has become much more commercialised

Valentine - Structure and Form

- Free verse: no beat

- No rhyme scheme

- Short stanzas of varied length: mimics layers of an onion, potentially

- Not a sonnet!

A Wife in London - Quotes

- "The Tragedy"

- "She sits in the tawny vapour / That the City lanes have uprolled / Behind whose webby fold on fold [...] The street-lamp glimmers cold"

- "Flashed news is in her hand [...] He - has fallen - in the far South Land ..."

- "The Irony"

- "the fog hangs thicker"

- "The postman nears and goes: / A letter is brought whose lines disclose [...] His hand, whom the worm now knows"

- "Page-full of his hoped return [...] And of new love they would learn"

A Wife in London - Context

- Critical of Victorian society and decline of rural life

- Hardy spent much time seeing women other than his wife Emma, who spent much time by herself in her attic rooms as a result

- Poem written in 1899, at the start of the 2nd Boer War, which was fought in Africa: "far South Land"

A Wife in London - Structure and Form

- ABBAB rhyme scheme

- 4 stanzas

- Metre is varied and inconsistent

Death of a Naturalist - Quotes

- "All year the flax-dam festered"

- "Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. / Bubbles gargled delicately"

- "There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, / But best of all was the warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn"

- "I would fill jampotfuls [...] Miss Walls would tell us how / The daddy frog was called a bullfrog"

- "they were yellow in the sun and brown / In rain."

- "Then one hot day [...] angry frogs / Invaded the flax-damn"

- "The air was thick with a bass chorus"

- "The slap and plop were obscene threats."

- "I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings / Were gathered there for vengeance"

- "if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it."

Death of a Naturalist - Context

- The speaker is Heaney as a child, who grew up in rural Northern Ireland

- He visited a flax-damn as a child

- Flax is often associated with Northern Ireland

- Contrast to Heaney's later poems, which often comment on the Troubles

Death of a Naturalist - Structure and Form

- Blank verse

- Iambic pentameter: beating of the heart and passing of time

- "Then" at start of stanza 2 signals change in focus

Hawk Roosting - Quotes

- "I sit in the top of the wood"

- "in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat"

- "The convenience of the high trees!"

- "the earth's face upward for my inspection"

- "The allotment of death"

- "No arguments assert my right"

Hawk Roosting - Context

- Hawks have exceptional eyesight, are intelligent and are known for being violent

- Can be interpreted as a metaphor for a military leader, particularly a dictator

Hawk Roosting - Structure and Form

- Dramatic monologue

- Stanzas 1 and 2 focus on nature while 3-6 focus on the god-like nature of the hawk

To Autumn - Quotes

- "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!"

- "fill all fruit with ripeness to the core"

- "Thee sitting careless on a granary floor"

- "soft-dying day"

- "gathering swallows twitter in the skies"

To Autumn - Context

- Keats wrote this as he was dying of tuberculosis so poem can be considered a metaphor for his life

To Autumn - Structure and Form

- Chronological

- Enjambment

- Non-regular but frequent rhymes

- Iambic pentameter

Afternoons - Quotes

- "Summer is fading: / The leaves fall in ones and twos"

- "Young mothers assemble"

- "And the children, so intent on / Finding more unripe acorns, / Except to be taken home"

- "pushing them / To the side of their own lives"

Afternoons - Context

- Larkin lived a restricted life as a librarian and never married or travelled abroad

Afternoons - Structure and Form

- Stanzas reflect on past, present and future respectively

- Enjambment

- No rhyming

Dulce et Decorum Est - Quotes

- "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks"

- "coughing like hags"

- "Men marched asleep."

- "All went lame; all blind;"

- "Gas! Gas! Quick boys!"

- "face, like a devil's sick of sin"

- "The old Lie"

Dulce et Decorum Est - Context

- Wilfred Owen fought in the war so was writing from experience

- The phrase "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" was used in war propaganda and originally written by Horace

Dulce et Decorum Est - Structure and Form

- Mostly steady beat

- Stanza length varies

- Rhyme scheme varies but in general alternating lines rhyme

Ozymandias - Quotes

- "I met a traveller from an antique land"

- "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies"

- "Sneer of cold command"

- "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay"

Ozymandias - Context

- Inspired by a statue of Ramses II which was en route to London in 1817

- Egyptian pharaohs were dictators, which Shelley was opposed to

Ozymandias - Structure and Form

- Petrarchan sonnet but with modified rhyme scheme, which is mostly unclear

- Iambic pentameter

- Combined octave and sestet with volta

Mametz Wood - Quotes

- "the wasted young"

- "A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade, / the relic of a finger"

- "They were told to walk, not run"

- "And even now the earth stands sentinel"

- "twenty men buried [...] their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre"

- "Boots that outlasted them"

Mametz Wood - Context

- Mametz Wood was the fight of fierce fighting during the Battle of the Somme in WW1

- Soldiers of the Welsh division were ordered to take the wood

- They succeeded but their bravery and sacrifice was not acknowledged

- Grave of twenty Allied soldiers with linked arms uncovered

Mametz Wood - Structure and Form

- Three-line stanzas + some lines longer than others

- Stanzas alternate between focus on the land, bones and people with stanza 7 acting as a conclusion

The Prelude - Quotes

- The cottage windows through the twilight blaz'd

- It was a time of rapture: clear and loud

- Proud and exulting, like an untired horse

- And woodland pleasures, the reasounding horn

- The Pack loud bellowing, and the hinted hare

- The leafless tress and every icy crag

The Prelude - Context

- Autobiographical

- Wordsworth spent much time outside as a child

- Wordsworth frequently visited his grandparents, who lived in an extremely rural location

The Prelude - Structure and Form

- Conversational poem

- Blank verse: carefree

- Enjambment: increases pace