Mnemonics for poems Flashcards
The Charge of the light Brigade
HVRS
(Honour valley run sabre)
H = “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward”
V = “Valley of death”
R = “Rode six hundred”
S = “ sabre stroke shatter’d and sunder’s”
Ozymandias
I met king my look
I = “I met a traveller”
King = “king of kings”
My = “My name is Ozymandias”
Look = “Look on my works”
London
AIRA
(And In Run And)
A = “ And marks in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe”
I = “In every cry of every man, In every infant’s cry of fear”
R = “Run in blood down Palace Walls”
A = “And blights with plagues the marriage hearse”
Exposure
BATFW
(But All the flakes what)
A = “All their eyes are ice”
T = “The merciless iced east wind that knive us”
W = “What are we doing here?”
F = “ flowing flakes that flock”
B =“But nothing happens”
The Emigree
IMIMI
(It My I My I)
I = “It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants”
M = “ my memory of it is sunlight clear”
I = “I carried here like a hollow doll”
M = “My city takes me dancing through the city walls”
I = “I have no passport, there’s no way back at all”
The Prelude
SWAN
(She went a No)
S = “She was an elfin pinnace”
W = “Went heaving through the water like a swan”
A = “ a huge peak, black and huge”
N = “ no pleasant images of trees, of sea or sky, no colours of green fields”
Storm on the island
WBBE
(We blast but exploding)
W = “We are prepared “
B = “Blast:you know what I mean”
B = “But there are no trees, no natural shelter”
E = “Exploding comfortably”
My last Duchess
MWTI
(My willn’t too I)
M = “My last Duchess painted on the wall”
W = “Will’t please you sit and look at her”
I = “I gave commands ;Then all smiles stopped together”
T = “ too soon made glad, too easily impressed”
Bayonet Charge
HBYH
(His hot yellow bullets)
H = “hot khaki, his sweat heavy”
B = “Bullets smacking the belly out of the air.. a rifle numb as smashed arm.
Y = “Yellow hare that rolled like a flame”
H = “His terror’s touchy dynamite”
Remains
HBHI
(His But His I)
H= “His bloody-shadow stays on the street”
B = “But I blink”
H = “His bloody life in my bloody hands”
I = “I see every round as it rips through his life”
Check Out Me History
BDBF
(But Dem Bandage French)
B = “But now I checking me own histiry I carving out me identity”
D = “Dem tell me bout de dish ran away with de spoon but dem never tell me bout Nanny de maroon”
B = “Bandage up me eye with me own history”
F = “French Toussaint de beacon”
Poppies
HILS
(Hoping I later smoothed)
H = “hoping to hear”
I = “I was brave”
L= “Later single dove flew from the pear tree”
S = “smoothed down your shirt’s”
War photographer
SHART
(Spools He A Runnung they)
S = “ spools of suffering set out in order rows”
H = “He has a job to do”
A = “A hundred agonies in black and white”
R = “Running children in a nightmare heat”
T = “ they do not care”
Tissue
T = “Tissue” (as a title)
M = “might fly our lives like paper kites”
T = “turned into your skin”
P = “pages smoothed and stroks”
Kamikaze
ABTO
(At Built they one)
A = “ at the little fishing boat strung out like bunting?
B = “ Built cairns of pearl- grey pebbles”
T = “they treated him as through he no longer existed”
O = “ One-way journey into history
