GCSE English Quotes Flashcards
Percy Shelley Ozymandias (Power) - How all power is fleeting
‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck’
oxymorons/juxtaposition
Percy Shelley Ozymandias (Power) - The cruelty, oppression and corruption of those in power
‘sneer of cold command’
imagery
scowl of superiority, disdainful of subjects
Percy Shelley Ozymandias (Power) - The insignificance and impotence of humans in the face of nature/time’s power
‘Lone and level sands stretch far away’
resolution
Percy Shelley Ozymandias (Pride) - The danger of pride and arrogance
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!’
symbolism
William Blake London (Power) - The cruelty, oppression and corruption by those in power
‘blackning church appalls’
‘hapless soldiers sigh runs in blood down palace walls’
imagery
William Blake London (Conflict) - Between an individual and ‘the system’; the poem is a protest against injustice
‘I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow’
repetition
everything is owned
anti-establishment
William Blake London (Power) - The potential power of individuals to overcome oppressive regimes
‘the mind-forged manacles’
metaphors
the Social Contract
William Blake London (Loss of innocence) - The corruption of the innocent by those in power
‘the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s ear’
maternal power
Seamus Heaney Storm on the Island (Conflict) - The conflict between man and the natural world
‘exploding comfortably’
oxymoron
‘spits like a tame cat turned savage’
simile
suddenly and unexpectedly violent and aggressive
Seamus Heaney Storm on the Island (Power) - The insignificance and impotence of humans in the face of nature’s power
‘We just sit tight while wind dives and strafes invisibly’
metaphor
Seamus Heaney Storm on the Island (Appearance vs reality)
‘We are prepared: we build our houses squat’
‘Strange, it is a huge nothing we fear.’
Opens with stubborn and proud statement, finishes with unsettled fear… troubles?
Wilfred Owen Exposure (Conflict) - Between an individual and the system; the poem is a protest against injustice
‘What are we doing here?’
refrain
‘we cringe in holes’
imagery
Wilfred Owen Exposure (Conflict) - The insignificance and impotence of humans in the face of nature’s power
‘the merciless iced east winds that knife us’
‘dawn massing in the east her melancholy army … attacks once more in shivering ranks of grey’
metaphors
personification
Wilfred Owen Exposure (Conflict) - The psychological effects of warfare
‘all their eyes are ice’
‘we hear mad gusts tugging on the wire, like twitching agonies of men among its brambles’
Ted Hughes Bayonet Charge (Conflict) - The visceral experience of fighting
‘Raw in raw-seamed hot khaki’
repetition/imagery
raw recruits skin rubbed raw by uniform
Ted Hughes Bayonet Charge (Conflict) - The conflict between man and the natural world; in this poem it is man destroying nature
‘The shot-slashed furrows threw up a yellow hare’
imagery
Ted Hughes Bayonet Charge (Conflict) - The psychological effects of warfare
‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera dropped like luxuries’
simile
Ted Hughes Bayonet Charge (Loss of innocence) - The speaker’s realisation of the cold indifference of those in charge
‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand pointing at that second?’
William Wordsworth The Prelude (Power) - The insignificance and impotence of humans in the face of nature’s power
‘a huge peak, black and huge… upreared its head’
personification
William Wordsworth The Prelude (Loss of innocence) - The loss of the naïve confidence of youth in the face of experience
‘As I rose upon the stroke my boat went heaving through the water like a swan’
‘With trembling oars I turned, and through the silent water stole my way’
Juxtaposition
William Wordsworth The Prelude (Conflict) - The conflict between man and the natural world
‘no familiar shapes remained, no pleasant images of trees, Of sea or sky’
Imagery
William Wordsworth The Prelude (Trauma) - The memory if a traumatic experience haunts the speaker
‘huge and mighty forms that do not live… were a trouble to my dreams’
R and J: Death-marked
‘The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love’
Juxtaposition, Imagery
R and J: Verona
‘In fair Verona’
Irony
R and J: Grudge
‘From ancient grudge break to new mutiny’
Structure, Antithesis
R and J: Naked Weapon
‘My naked weapon is out’
Double-entendré, Symbolism
R and J: Your lives for peace
‘Your lives shall pay the forfeit of peace’
Juxtaposition
R and J: Men, Beasts
’ You men, you beasts’
Asyndetic, Zoomorphism, Parallel Phrases
R and J: Religion of eyes
‘When the devout religion of mine eye’
Motif
R and J: Swan to Crow
‘And I will make thee think thy swan a crow’
Motif
R and J: Eye infection
‘Take thou some new poison to thy eye and the rank poison of the old will die’
R and J: Here ma’am
‘Madam, I am here, what is your will?’
Formal address/ register
R and J: Beauty rich
‘O, she is rich in beauty’
Ecphonesis
R and J: Love is smoke
‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs’
Sibilance
