poetry Flashcards
A Poison Tree
William Blake
“I was angry with my friend”
“I told my wrath, my wrath did end”
“And it grew both day and night”
“My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree”
The Destruction of Sennacherib
Lord Byron
“Angel of death spread his wings”
“And their hearts that but once heaved, and for ever grow still”
“Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord”
Extract from The Prelude
William Wordsworth
“Small circles glittering idly in the moon”
“Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky”
“Like living men, moved slowly through the mind”
The Man He Killed
Thomas Hardy
“I shot at him as he at me”
“And killed him in his place”
“No other reason why”
“Or help to half a-crown”
Cousin Kate
Christina Rossetti
"He wore me like a golden knot" "He changed me like a glove" "Call me an outcast thing" "Your love was writ in sand" "He had not won me with his love"
Half-Caste
John Agard
“Excuse me standing on one leg”
“Explain yuself wha yu mean”
“England weather nearly always half-caste”
“Why I offer yu half a-hand”
Exposure
Wilfred Owen
“Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous”
“But nothing happens”
“Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glazed”
“We turn back to our dying”
“For love of God seems dying”
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“All in the valley of death”
“Their’s but to do and die”
“Into the jaws of death”
“Into the mouth of hell”
Catrin
Gillian Clarke
“Red rope of love”
“Our struggle to become separate. We want, we shouted, to be two”
“Neither won nor lost the struggle”
“Trailing love and conflict”
“As you ask may you skate in the dark, for one more hour”
War Photographer
Carole Satyamurti
“Picture’s such as lifts the heart”
“The first bomb of the morning”
“She dropped her burden”
“But hell, like heaven is untidy”
Belfast Confetti
Cairn Carson
“Suddenly as the riot squad moved in”
“It was raining exclamation marks”
“This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire…”
“All the alleyways and side streets blocked with stops and colons”
“A fusillade of question-marks”
The Class Game
Mary Casey
"How can you tell what class I'm from?" "Drop my unemployment card" "My hands are stained with toil" "Soft lily-white with perfume and oil?" "And I'm proud of the class that I come from"
Poppies
Jane Weir
“Three days before Armistice Sunday”
“Released a song bird from its cage”
“Inscriptions on the war memorial, leaned against it like a wishbone”
“Hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind”
No Problem
Benjamin Zephaniah
“I am not de problem”
“I am branded athletic”
“Yu put me in a pigeon hole. But I am versatile”
“Sum of me best friends are white”
What Were They Like?
Denise Levertov
“Did they distinguish between speech and singing?”
“Who can say? It’s silent now”
“Did they use bone and ivory, jade and silver, for ornament?”
“All the bones were charred”
