Make sure you know what each poem is

about.
Poetry:
List of Poems:
Once Upon a Time, Gods Grandeur, My Parents, A Stones Throw, Little Boy Crying,
Sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1803
Poem
Once Upon a Time Gabriel
Okara

Areas for analysis

Themes: Childhood, Innocence, Change/ Dreams
and desire
Tone: conversational, nostalgic, sombre,
emotional, serious, disconsolate (end hopeful
tone)
Mood: sombre/ nostalgic
Literary Devices: Allusion (Once Upon a Time) ,
metaphor (Ice block cold eyes/ shake hands
without hearts/portrait fixed smile [metaphor for
dishonesty ) Simile (wear faces like dresses/like
a snakes bare fangs) IRONY (homeface [ironic
that you cant have your true face at home]
Repetition (once upon a time)
Perspective/Point of view: 1st person, Parent
speaking to child

Gods Grandeur by Gerard

Manley Hopkins

Form: Free verse /narrative poem

Themes: Religion /Man and the natural world/
Transformation
Tone: awe/Amazement/ formal
Mood: Reflective
Literary Devices: hyperbole/simile l3, l4/Rhetorical
question L4/Repetition L5/Alliteration L14/
Personification L14-15
Perspective/Point of view: anonymous speaker

My Parents Stephen Spender

Form: Sonnet
Themes: Childhood experiences/class differences/
Isolation
Tone: conversational/ informative
Mood: nostalgic/ reflective/reminiscent
Literary Devices: antithesis* / simile/metaphor L
2/alliteration L3 (t sound)
Perspective/Point of view:1st person (a an adult
remembering childhood

Form: Free verse /3 stanzas /narrative type poem

*antithesis : A person or thing that is the direct
opposite of someone or something else

We can visualise the persona through antithesis. He is

everything that they are not; softly spoken (words like

stones), well dressed (torn clothes, rags), passive ( they
ran and climbed), inhibited - modesty (they stripped by
country streams), weak (muscles of iron), well mannered
(salt coarse pointing) lisp (parodied by copying), clumsy
(lithe), and friendly ( hostile- they never smiled).
Poem
A Stones Throw -Elma Mitchell

Areas for Analysis

Themes: Religion/ discrimination/
hypocrisy/ oppression/ sin
Tone: (the tone changes)
Informative, Conversational, Bragging,
Condescending, proud, sarcastic,
scornful, superior
Mood: lustful, vengeful, unapologetic
Literary Devices: Allusion (title)
Metaphor , Hail of Kisses of stone
(title). Irony (the speaker talks about
virtue but is not virtuous)
Perspective/Point of view: 1st person. A
Pharisee

Form: FREE VERSE

Little Boy Crying Mervyn Mitchell

Themes: Childhood/ time

/change/punishment/Sadness/discipline/
regret
Tone: CHANGES
Hateful, soft, regretful
Mood: suffering, depressed
Literary Devices: Metaphor L8, L16 (
Ogrethat towers above you) Allusion
(Jack and the beanstalk (stanza 2)
Alliteration L 8, 9, L17 longs to lift,
contrast (between parent and childs
reaction) personification swimming
tears L5,
Perspective/Point of view: omniscient,
an adult, a parent, perhaps a father

Form: FREE VERSE

Sonnet Composed Upon Westminister
Bridge

Themes: nature/man and the natural

world /city vs countryside
Tone: awe /amazement/ admiration
Mood: amazement, calm/peaceful,
Literary Devices: hyperbole, simile ,
personification l4 &13 metaphor L14
mighty heart (i.e. the city)

Perspective/Point of view: unknown

speaker/adult

Form: sonnet

1) Summarize each poem (WHAT IS EACH POEM ABOUT?)

2) Identify in Each poem (write them out)
Theme
Tone
Mood
Literary Devices
Form
Match poems by:
Theme
Tone
Mood
Literary Devices
Form

3) Explain the effectiveness of EACH literary device found in EACH poem

Examples

Summary: My Parents by Stephen Spender is about a speaker

recounting the childhood experience of being bullied as a child
and the speakers response to the other children. The poem
touches on a social divide between the comfortable middle class
narrator and local working class children. It is a divide of which
both sides are keenly aware. On the one side, the narrators
parents kept me from children who were rough, while on the
other, the children threw mud at my world. The local children
have freedom, roaming the street, cliffs and country streams
and they have physical presence, with thighs, muscles like iron
and they are described as lithe. At the end of the poem, the
narrator and the other children remain apart: I longed to forgive
them but they never smiled. As the poem develops through its
three stanzas, the boy seems to long for more than to offer
forgiveness. Spenders language consistently expresses
admiration, even envy, of the other children
Similar Themes: Nature/ Natural world
Gods Grandeur and Sonnet Composed Upon West
Minister Bridge, September 3, 1802
Similar Tone: Conversational

Once Upon a Time and My Parents

Similar Mood: My parents & Once Upon a Time (nostalgic)
Literary Devices: Allusion
Poems: Once Upon a Time and A Stones Throw
Form: Free verse

My Parents and Once Upon a Time