2. Look
Title: Meaning?
Number of Lines:
Number of Stanzas:
Rhyme Pattern: (ABAB, etc)
Type of rhyme pattern? Sonnet, ballad,
free verse, blank verse, haiku, etc.
3. Listen
Underline and label with letters below.
a) Enjambed lines?
b) End stopped lines?
c) Alliteration?
d) Assonance?
e) Consonance?
f) Internal rhyme?
g) Slant rhyme?
h) Regular rhythm?
7. Figurative meaning, line by line
1. Poem
Title:
Author:
Genre:
5 Figures of Speech
Underline and label as: Simile, Metaphor,
Personification
6. Imagery
Identify with highlight
Identify sense(s): Sight, Taste, Smell, Touch,
Hearing
4. Literal meaning,
Express the literal meaning line by line.
Write to the right of the poem.
8. Word Choice: Powerful language, unique word choice? Ironic
9. Theme(s)
use of words?
10. Quality of poem? 4,3,2,1:
Why? Universality? Unique statement? Powerful images, language, figures of speech?
11. How does each element add to the meaning of the poem? Some elements may be absent; one or two may make the primary impact of the
poem. Generally look at each element again and summarize in a phrase.
Title:
Shape, stanzas, rhyme pattern:
Sound and sense:
What is actually happening?
Imagery:
Figurative language:
Word choice:
Theme:
Universal? Unique?
2. Look
Title: Meaning? Just as the color gold is
temporary in nature, golden times are
temporary.
Number of Lines: 8
Number of Stanzas: 2
Rhyme Pattern: (ABAB, etc) AABB CC DD
Type of rhyme pattern? Sonnet, ballad,
free verse, blank verse, haiku, etc.
3. Listen
7. Figurative meaning, line by line
Just as plants begin in a “golden” way and
begin to bloom with flowers,
6. Imagery
Underline and label with letters below.
a) Enjambed lines? None
b) End stopped lines? All
c) Alliteration?
d) Assonance?
e) Consonance?
f) Internal rhyme?
g) Slant rhyme?
h) Regular rhythm?
Identify with underline and lable
Identify sense(s): Sight, Taste, Smell, Touch,
Hearing
Sight: colors: green/gold
Flora: leaf and flower,
Sinking: leaf giving in to become not a
flower, but a leaf
Eden sinks to grief
Dawn “sinks” to become day
Sinking becomes a disappointment a lower
form
1. Poem
4. Literal meaning,
Title: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Author: Robert Frost
Genre: lyrical poem
Express the literal meaning line by line.
Write to the right of the poem.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
So, leafs become just leafs.
In the same way, paradise was lost,
The beauty of sunrise becomes the ordinary
day,
Beauty and paradise are momentary and
transient.
…. And yet growth in nature, and the reality
of the day, and even the expulsion from
paradise resulted in greater opportunities
for growth of nature and mankind.
5 Figures of Speech
Underline and label as: Simile, Metaphor,
Personification
Simile/paradox: first green is gold
Early leaf is a flower
Dawn goes down to day
Nature's first green is gold
sight
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower; sight
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day. Sight:
Nothing gold can stay.
descent
8. Word Choice: Powerful language, unique word choice? Ironic
use of words?
“subsides” captures the sense of loss as that once-flower-leaf
becomes a regular leaf
“goes down” is paradoxical since the sun is moving upward and yet
the emotion that one feels is one of loss of beauty.
Golden color and golden times are transient.
The first color of a plant is yellow/gold.
That color does not last long in nature.
The first buds look more like flowers than
leaves.
But only for a short period of time
Then those once-flower leaves become plain
old leaves.
Just as the paradise of Eden ended in the
grief of Adam and Eve being expelled from
the Garden.
Just as the beauty of dawn becomes the
everyday color, of day.
Thus, in nature and in experience, perfect
moments are only temporary.
9. Theme(s)
Loss of beauty
Loss of perfection and Paradise
Transience of perfect moments
10. Quality of poem? 4,3,2,1:
Why? Universality? Unique statement? Powerful images, language, figures of speech?
It is a surprise to realize that what we think of as green begins as gold.
It is a short and intense poem.
11. So what?
I would have students read some analyses, for example:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm