EWC 4U
Imagery Practice: Imagery In Poetry And Prose
Highlight or underline the imagery in the following passages, then name the sense(s) to
which the imagery appeals and answer the questions.
Activity 1
Passage 1: Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
"I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times.
...I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs.
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
I clutch at the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin..."
A. SENSES:
B. TONES
C. To what or whom is the poet comparing himself ?
Passage 2: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
“Once upon a time - of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve - old Scrooge sat
busy in his countinghouse. It was cold, bleak, biting weather; foggy withall; and he could
hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands
upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.
The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already - it had not been
light all day - and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and
keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the
houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down,
obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was
brewing on a large scale.”
A. SENSES
B. TONES
C. What is ironic about the passage?
Passage 3: Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll by John Greenleaf Whittier
“... Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost*
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores...”
A. SENSES
B. TONES
C. What is personified in this passage?
Passage 4: Romeo and Juliet, Act IV, Scene 5 by William Shakespeare
“Ha! Let me see her. Out, alas! She's cold,
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated.
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
A. SENSES
B. TONES
C. What is the simile in this passage?
*tossed
Passage 5: The Canterbury Tales translated by Nevill Coghill
“There was a Summoner with us at that Inn,
His face on fire, like a cherubim, *
For he had carbuncles.*
His eyes were narrow,
He was as hot and lecherous as a sparrow.
Black scabby brows he had, and a thin beard.
Children were afraid when he appeared.
No quicksilver, lead ointment, tartar creams,
No brimstone, no boracic, so it seems,
Could make a salve that had the power to bite,
Clean up, or cure his whelks* of knobby white
Or purge the pimples sitting on his cheeks."\”
*angel
*boils
*pus-filled sores
A. SENSES:
B. TONES
C. Identify the figures of speech found on lines two and five?
Activity 2: Active Reading
For each of the following passages
:
• Describe the physical senses that the imagery invokes or evokes.
• Identify not only literal objects, actions and scenes, but also vehicles of
metaphor and similes that contribute to the imagery.
• Explain the effects of the imagery on the tone and meaning of the passage.
Passage 6: “The Bean Eaters” Gwendolyn Brooks
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood.
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinges and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of
beads and receipts and dolls and
clothes, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
Passage 7: “Pied Beauty” Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded* cow
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls*; finches’ wings
*brindled
*chestnuts as bright coals
***
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Passage 8: Macbeth William Shakespeare
I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall’n into the sere*, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour*, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.
*withered
*lip service
Passage 9: “Is My Team Ploughing” A. E. Housman
“Is my team ploughing,
That I used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was a man alive?”
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
Passage 10: Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
The Rue du Coq d’Or, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from
the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out on to the
pavement to address a lodger on the third floor. Her bare feet were stuck into sabots 1 and her
grey hair was streaming down.
Madame Monce: “Salope!2 Salope! How many times
Have I not told you to not squash bugs on the wallpaper? Do you think you’ve bought the hotel,
eh? Why can’t you throw them out of the window like everyone else? Putain!3 Salope!”
The woman on the third floor: Vache!4
Thereupon a whole variegated chorus of yells, as windows were flung open on every side and
half the street joined in the quarrel. They shut up abruptly ten minutes later, when a squadron of
cavalry rode past and people stopped shouting to look at them.
1wooden shoes
2slattern
3whore
4cow, slang derogatory word for a woman