Reading Final Review
Poems
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury – he has never done
With his delight; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one is drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
Critical Questions
1. In this Italian sonnet, Keats describes two “poets” of the natural world. Who is the poet of the summer in the first eight lines? Who is the poet of winter in the last six lines?
2. What simple words does Keats use to describe the hot, sleepy feeling of a summer day? What words does he use to describe a winter evening?
3. Which line of the poem echoes the first line? How do the changed words affect the meaning?
4. In this brief sonnet, Keats makes points about nature, sound, and silence, the heat of summer (and life), the cold of winter (and death). Sum up in your own words one point that the poet makes in the first eight lines of the sonnet. What point, related to the one you discussed, does he make in the last six lines?
Grandmother
If I were to see
Her shape from a mile away
I’d know so quickly
That it would be her
The purple scarf
And the plastic bag.
If I felt
Hands on my head
I’d know that those
Were the hands
Warm and damp
With the smell
Of roots.
If I heard
A voice
Coming from
A rock
I’d know
And her words
Would flow inside me
Like the light
Of someone
Atirring ashes
From a sleeping fire
At night.
Elements of Literature
Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds in words...