ENGLI
POE
MA
, INDEX
1. Summary of all poems
2. I have my father’s voice – Chris Van Wyk
3. Portraits of a loaf of bread- Mtshali
4. Nightsong: City – Dennis Brutus
5. Love’s Farewell - Michael Drayton
6. The Tenant. – Na Ngulube
7. Touch – Hugh Lewin
8. To Night – Percy Shelley
9. To Althea, from prison – Richard Lovelace
10. The cry of South Africa – Olive Schreiner
11. No longer mourn for me when I am dead – William Shakespeare
12. Refugee Blues – W.H Auden
13. The wind begun to rock the grass – Emily Dickinson
14. Assassination – Don L. Lee
15. Penguin on the beach – Ruth Miller
16. My last Duchess – Robert Browning
17. Nobody Loses all the time – E.E cummings
18. Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen
19. Ulysses – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
20. Nobody Loses all the time – Serote
21. Questions
Lexi Davies
,ENGLISH POETRY
BASIC OVERVIEW OF ALL THE POEMS.
The Cry of South Africa – Olive Schreiner
Message: -Criticizes the atrocities and futility of war.
-Highlights the atrocities and senselessness of war and the loss of innocent lives. It
is also a support of the Afrikaners during the Anglo-Boer war. On a psychological
and personal note, it is the voice of a mother crying for her dead children to return. It
is a poem about mourning and loss.
From the Title South Africa is given a voice – mimics the outcry of South Africa.
There is an extended metaphor throughout the poem – South Africa as a
mother/motherland.
Soldiers are compared to sons
The land/mountain terrain is compared to breasts
This shows the connects between the soldiers/men who went to war and the land in
which they grew up in and died on.
Tone of the poem: somber, melancholic, dejected, indignation, anger, resentment.
The Tenant – Na Ncube (Ngulube)
Message: -The difficulty of letting go of a love.
-How each person/past relationship has an effect on us/shapes who we are.
-Through the use of an extended metaphor of the tenant, the speaker compares the
emotional baggage that remains after the relationship has ended abruptly to tenant
who has rented a temporary living space. The extended metaphor shows the
theme of abandonment – how one relationship affects the next. Home = heart and
the baggage and stain = pain. Lots of words to show choice such as “I could’
Extended metaphor:
A tenant who takes up residence in his house
A person/lover who takes up residence in his heart
Tone: Frank, candid, unsentimental
Mood: Heartbroken, Despondent and, lonely.
,The Wind Begun to rock the Grass – Emily Dickinson
Message: - Celebrates the power of nature and show transformation in nature.
-The intention of the poem is to show the chaos, menace and threat of the storm.
She encourages us to see the awesome, wonderous power of nature in fresh new
ways through the manipulation of language.
Figures of speech:
Metaphor – ‘With threatening tunes and low’
Sound of thunder compared to a tune
Simile - ‘The dust did scoop itself like hands’
The way that the dust blows in the wind is compared to a person picking itself up
Tone: unsettling, mysterious, disconcerting
No longer mourn for me when I am dead – William Shakespeare
Message: -we cannot let grief stop us from living life.
-The speaker doesn’t want his lover to dwell on mourning/grieving
-The inevitability of death.
-The poem uses irony to show that although the speaker appears concerned about
his beloved, in reality, he is more concerned about being forgotten and the quality of
his legacy.
Structure: Elizabethan sonnet
Irony: Tells his beloved to forget him when he is gone... but also does so in a poem
that guarantees the lover will remember him.
Tone: hopeless, sorrowful, elegiac, somber.
Penguin on the Beach – Ruth Miller
Message: -Criticizes human indifference/rampant disregard for environment and their
consequences.
-Miller critiques human beings cruel disregard for marine life and the safety of the
environment.
She reveals her disgust for the indifference and complacency of human beings.
She is pejorative/critical of the fact that human beings simply don’t care about the
consequences of their actions. They are selfish, thoughtless and damaging.
Psychological explanation of trauma – PTSD
Penguin is humanized – ‘manikin’/ ‘stranger in his own element’
Tone: distressed, dark, melancholic,
,Assassination – Haki Mabuti
Message: - Assertion of racism/ Oppression of black Americans
-Speaks against the conventional/accepted story of the assassination of MLK –
seeking justice and honors the Black heroes
- It is speaking out against the accepted story of the MLK assassination and
showing the corruption of the American government. Honouring of black heroes.
Turns MLK into a mythical symbol/timeless leader
Uses bitter irony and sarcasm.
Tone: frantic, tinged with bitterness and distaste
Structure/Typography: free verse/ lots of indentation – suggests movement/ frenzy
and also indicates unrestraint
I have my father’s voice – Chris Van Wyk
Message: Explores identity and the relationship between self and parent
Embraces the traits he attains from his father.
- The intention of the poem is to explore a young man’s sense of identity illustrating
a parent’s influence on a personality. It is also an exploration of a political identity
and how anger can be used by a poet to develop a political voice.
Sound devices: Assonance – ‘an air of assonance’
Synecdoche: ‘I have my father’s voice’ – Voice represents his father
Literary reference: ‘fee fi fo fum’ – Jack & the Beanstalk
Tone: sincere, reflective, nostalgic, pride, frank.
Love’s farewell – Michael Drayton
Message: Deals with the loss of a lover – the pained love of a true lover for an
unsympathetic lady.
- The intention is to show the complexity of emotions in a breakup. The speaker tries
to hide his vulnerability yet ultimately reveals his pain and anguish at the thought of
losing his beloved.
Sonnet: abab, cdcd, efef, gg
Tone – it varies:
cruel, clinical, confident then becomes sorrowful, desperate, uncertain, differential.
,Ulysses – Alfred Tennyson
Message: The inevitability of age/death & grief – you cannot fight against them but.
That does not mean you must give up the quest for knowledge and new
experiences. This search is what defines a meaningful life.
- Ulysses’ is an attempt by the poet to come to terms with the great loss he felt at the
death of his dear and close friend. It is a call to go forward and be brave despite the
struggles that life presents.
The theme of the poem is basically simple – one must try to live life to the full at all
times, otherwise, as Ulysses says, life will ‘rust’ and become ‘unburnished’ through
disuse. In other words, a wasted life is dull, empty and unproductive. It is also about
not yielding in the face of grief.
Themes: Mortality & age
Adventure & Knowledge
Caution Vs Recklessness
Heroism & overcoming limitations
Dramatic monologue – gives us a sense of the inner world of the speaker.
Metaphor: ‘I will drink life to the lees’
‘Hungry heart’
‘Drunk delight of battle’
‘Yet all experience is an arch wherethro gleams that untravell’d world’
Assonance: ‘it little profits that an idle king’
‘Matched with an aged wife’
‘Some work of noble note, may yet be done’
Alliteration: ‘hungry heart’
‘And drunk delight of battle’
‘Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;’
Simile: ‘and this gray spirit yearning in desire/ To follow knowledge like a sinking
star, /Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought’
Tone: reflective, contemplative, hopeful, inspirational
My Last Duchess – Robert Browning
Message: The poem criticises the viewpoint of Browning’s era where woman were
objects to be controlled, possessed and then discarded.
Mocks the snobbery and shallowness of the elitist society that think status allows
abuse of power, manipulation and dominance.
The poem is a comment on the patriarchal attitude to women in the Victorian era
where women were controlled. It is also a psychological profile of a psychopath.
Structure: Dramatic monologue
Tone: Colloquial, ignorant, vulgar, insensitive, arrogant
,Nobody loses all the time – E.E. Cummings
Message: even the most unsuccessful people, succeed occasionally.
Uuncle Sol is a failure but he is exceptionally good at failing even when he does not
try he manages to lose which creates a paradox. Uncle Sol always wins when it
comes to losing.
It is a satire of the traditional view of success and argues that success and failure
cannot be easily defined.
To show the absurdity of ordinary life/values/goals/ambitions. It is a slice of life.
Vignette/anecdote, darkly humorous
Cummings was against any form of standardisation. Against stereotypes and
conformity.
Idiosyncratic syntax – peculiar use of words/syntax
Punctuation pun –‘somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my uncle
Sol
and started a worm farm)
mimics the coffin being lowered into the ground
Tone: Macabre, satirical, tone-in-cheek
Refugee blue – W.H Auden
Message: The poem considers the experiences of Jewish Refugees fleeing from
Nazi Germany in the build-up to WWII
-Explores the German persecution of the Jewish population prior and during World
War II.
Mistreatment of people is man-made.
We need to be careful about indifference.
Xenophobia – fear of strangers.
Express the hostility and antagonism which German Jews were faced with.
Bitter critique of ordinary evil. We are faced with the responsibility that suffering is
preventable. In the chilling context of the poem, the world did not heed this warning.
What is a refugee?
A person forced to leave his/her country to escape war/persecution.
Onomatopoeia – ‘thunder rumbling in the sky’
The threat of WWII is brewing.
Metaphor – ‘It was Hitler over Europe, saying “They must die”:’
Hitler’s rhetoric (persuasive language) is being compared to thunder that is roaring.
Hyperbole – ‘Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors’
‘A thousand windows and a thousand doors’
Pathetic fallacy – ‘stood on a great plain in the falling snow;’
They have been frozen out of society.
Tone: hopeless, anguish, bleak, intimate, despair.
,To night – Percy Shelley
A lyrical poem that expresses emotions from a personal viewpoint. Longing for the
night. Diction: apostrophe: he addresses the night directly. Extended personification.
The night becomes a supernatural, superhuman force in the poem, with an agency
(power) of its own. Traditionally, night is associated with death, despair and
sadness, yet ironically, the speaker associates the night with peace and
solitude. Shelley sees the night granting him imagination and stimulation. It is also a
place where he can hide himself.
Personification: ‘swiftly walk over the western wave,’
Night is being personified.
‘thy sweet child Sleep’ – sleep is personified as night’s child
Metaphor: ‘star-inwrought’
The starry night is being compared to a clock worn by night – the stars are sewn into
the sky.
Simile: ‘Lingering like an unloved guest’
‘Murmur’d like a noontide bee’
Tone: yearning, desperate, melancholic
Portrait of a loaf of Bread – Mtshali
Message: conscientizes the reader about : inequality, class division, mistreatment of
the working class
Intention/message/meaning: Conscientizing us and making us aware of class
consciousness and divisions. Gratitude and the value of bread. Privileged versus
underprivileged. He is criticising society’s lack of awareness of poverty/the labourer’s
plight. He also makes the point that simplicity can be met with gratitude.
Metaphor – ‘mountains of dough’
The piles of dough are so large they have been compared to mountains.
Simile – ‘and spat into pans as red hot as Satan’s cauldron’
The heat of the pan is compared to the heat of Satan’s cauldron – discomfort and
forceful work.
Allusion- ‘reaper’s scythe’
Grim Reaper = harvester of souls (personifies death)
‘”Man can live on bread alone”
An allusion to Matthew 4:4 ‘man shall not live by bread alone’ = he is not sustained
by bread he needs more (spiritual need/emotional needs etc.)
Tone: Candid, critical, frank
,Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen
Message: Owen explores the meaninglessness/futility and pity of war, revealing the
horrific realities endured by the soldiers. This is a means of challenging the lies of
war heroic and noble.
Owen’s intention is to increase our awareness of the horror, pain and fear of war. He
wishes to make his audience aware of the discrepancy between ‘the old Lie’ that war
is noble etc. and the reality of the horror of war.
His central message is to destroy the myth that war is glorious, as encapsulated in
the final two lines of the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est / pro patria mori’.
Dulce Et Decorum Est = It is all sweet and right
Metaphor - ‘Drunk with fatigue’
The feeling of being drunk is compared to complete fatigue and exhaustion that
consumes them
‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning’
The cloud of gas is being compared to a sea- soldiers are enveloped in an endless
wave of gas.
Simile – ‘His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin:’
The look on the soldier’s face is inconceivable.
Tone: Bitter, angry, frantic, callous,
Lost of Found world – Mongane Wally Serote
Message: He encourages the powerless to take control or initiate change. They have
a choice to be active (found - HOPE) or passive (lost - DESPAIR). In solitary
confinement, he learns to see beyond the literal and figurative imprisonment of
Apartheid. The poem’s use of mixed metaphors also alludes to the state’s control
and power of censorship which the poet avoids by ensuring that his poem is cryptic.
(Or else his poem is just obscure!) The poem uses a lot of natural imagery
suggesting that the speaker longs to identify with the harmony and beauty of nature
instead of the unnatural brutality of Apartheid and capitalism
Struggling with identity and hope – will the next generations be able to assert their
identity and achieve equality/justice?
A cyclical response to post-Apartheid SA where economic equality is an enemy of
freedom and hope.
Structure: No set structure: no moral fabric in society = lack of harmony or unjust
treatment. Free verse = longing for freedom from oppression of Apartheid.
Enjambment = his raw emotions. Broken poem = broken society.
Imagery/figures of speech: uses mixed metaphors in order to blur/hide his intention
to promote BC so his work won’t be banned.
Tone: frustrated, pungent, despair, hope, bitterness...
, Touch – Hugh Lewin
Exposes a fractured and brutal prison and Apartheid system. Exposes an Apartheid
society that is riddled with discrimination and injustice. Exploring how post-traumatic
stress is associated with prison. However, despite his inhumane treatment, his
humanity in a brutal system, remains. Hopeful and desires rehabilitation and
humanity. Intensely personal poem about needing to reconnect, physically,
emotionally and psychologically, after the trauma of prison life.
To althea, in prison – Richard Lovelace
Thoughts/imagination/beliefs/love is true freedom. Every stanza ends with the words
‘such liberty’. The contrast between prison and liberty creates a paradox. Paradox is
a seemingly absurd statement, but when looked at more closely, a truth emerges.
E.g. you have to cruel to be kind. However, the mind has freedom to think and
feel how it wishes. It may also be seen as a protest poem. He is rebelling against
his imprisonment and the parliamentarians. In prison, he experiences liberty.
One can never be trapped or constricted if one’s mind is free. – Intellectually
free/emotionally/imaginatively/love/ -poetry -words - intellectual – even if one is
physically bound.
Night song City – Denis Brutus
Message: -The speaker addresses his lover urging her to rest after the difficulties of
a typical SA day. He is calling SA to bring peace against the violence and fear with
which AH has infected it.
-In this poem, Brutus describes himself as a troubadour – a Medieval Knight trying to
help his beloved. He positions South Africa in need of help in order to be restored to
justice. Literally, the speaker addresses a lover, asking her to rest well after the
difficulties of the day.OR: Figuratively, the speaker is calling on South Africans
to find a way to find peace from the violence and horrors of Apartheid, despite
its cruelty. He seems to have a love-hate relationship with South Africa.
Metaphor: ‘police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;’
Police cars are being compared to cockroaches
Simile: ‘Violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed’
Violence is being compare to a bug
‘fear is imminent as sound in the wind-swung bell;’
Fear is being compared to bells that ring in the wind= A bell is guaranteed to ring in
the wind
Tone: two-fold
Soothing, gentle, tender, tranquil
Despair, anguish, terror, fear, distress
POE
MA
, INDEX
1. Summary of all poems
2. I have my father’s voice – Chris Van Wyk
3. Portraits of a loaf of bread- Mtshali
4. Nightsong: City – Dennis Brutus
5. Love’s Farewell - Michael Drayton
6. The Tenant. – Na Ngulube
7. Touch – Hugh Lewin
8. To Night – Percy Shelley
9. To Althea, from prison – Richard Lovelace
10. The cry of South Africa – Olive Schreiner
11. No longer mourn for me when I am dead – William Shakespeare
12. Refugee Blues – W.H Auden
13. The wind begun to rock the grass – Emily Dickinson
14. Assassination – Don L. Lee
15. Penguin on the beach – Ruth Miller
16. My last Duchess – Robert Browning
17. Nobody Loses all the time – E.E cummings
18. Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen
19. Ulysses – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
20. Nobody Loses all the time – Serote
21. Questions
Lexi Davies
,ENGLISH POETRY
BASIC OVERVIEW OF ALL THE POEMS.
The Cry of South Africa – Olive Schreiner
Message: -Criticizes the atrocities and futility of war.
-Highlights the atrocities and senselessness of war and the loss of innocent lives. It
is also a support of the Afrikaners during the Anglo-Boer war. On a psychological
and personal note, it is the voice of a mother crying for her dead children to return. It
is a poem about mourning and loss.
From the Title South Africa is given a voice – mimics the outcry of South Africa.
There is an extended metaphor throughout the poem – South Africa as a
mother/motherland.
Soldiers are compared to sons
The land/mountain terrain is compared to breasts
This shows the connects between the soldiers/men who went to war and the land in
which they grew up in and died on.
Tone of the poem: somber, melancholic, dejected, indignation, anger, resentment.
The Tenant – Na Ncube (Ngulube)
Message: -The difficulty of letting go of a love.
-How each person/past relationship has an effect on us/shapes who we are.
-Through the use of an extended metaphor of the tenant, the speaker compares the
emotional baggage that remains after the relationship has ended abruptly to tenant
who has rented a temporary living space. The extended metaphor shows the
theme of abandonment – how one relationship affects the next. Home = heart and
the baggage and stain = pain. Lots of words to show choice such as “I could’
Extended metaphor:
A tenant who takes up residence in his house
A person/lover who takes up residence in his heart
Tone: Frank, candid, unsentimental
Mood: Heartbroken, Despondent and, lonely.
,The Wind Begun to rock the Grass – Emily Dickinson
Message: - Celebrates the power of nature and show transformation in nature.
-The intention of the poem is to show the chaos, menace and threat of the storm.
She encourages us to see the awesome, wonderous power of nature in fresh new
ways through the manipulation of language.
Figures of speech:
Metaphor – ‘With threatening tunes and low’
Sound of thunder compared to a tune
Simile - ‘The dust did scoop itself like hands’
The way that the dust blows in the wind is compared to a person picking itself up
Tone: unsettling, mysterious, disconcerting
No longer mourn for me when I am dead – William Shakespeare
Message: -we cannot let grief stop us from living life.
-The speaker doesn’t want his lover to dwell on mourning/grieving
-The inevitability of death.
-The poem uses irony to show that although the speaker appears concerned about
his beloved, in reality, he is more concerned about being forgotten and the quality of
his legacy.
Structure: Elizabethan sonnet
Irony: Tells his beloved to forget him when he is gone... but also does so in a poem
that guarantees the lover will remember him.
Tone: hopeless, sorrowful, elegiac, somber.
Penguin on the Beach – Ruth Miller
Message: -Criticizes human indifference/rampant disregard for environment and their
consequences.
-Miller critiques human beings cruel disregard for marine life and the safety of the
environment.
She reveals her disgust for the indifference and complacency of human beings.
She is pejorative/critical of the fact that human beings simply don’t care about the
consequences of their actions. They are selfish, thoughtless and damaging.
Psychological explanation of trauma – PTSD
Penguin is humanized – ‘manikin’/ ‘stranger in his own element’
Tone: distressed, dark, melancholic,
,Assassination – Haki Mabuti
Message: - Assertion of racism/ Oppression of black Americans
-Speaks against the conventional/accepted story of the assassination of MLK –
seeking justice and honors the Black heroes
- It is speaking out against the accepted story of the MLK assassination and
showing the corruption of the American government. Honouring of black heroes.
Turns MLK into a mythical symbol/timeless leader
Uses bitter irony and sarcasm.
Tone: frantic, tinged with bitterness and distaste
Structure/Typography: free verse/ lots of indentation – suggests movement/ frenzy
and also indicates unrestraint
I have my father’s voice – Chris Van Wyk
Message: Explores identity and the relationship between self and parent
Embraces the traits he attains from his father.
- The intention of the poem is to explore a young man’s sense of identity illustrating
a parent’s influence on a personality. It is also an exploration of a political identity
and how anger can be used by a poet to develop a political voice.
Sound devices: Assonance – ‘an air of assonance’
Synecdoche: ‘I have my father’s voice’ – Voice represents his father
Literary reference: ‘fee fi fo fum’ – Jack & the Beanstalk
Tone: sincere, reflective, nostalgic, pride, frank.
Love’s farewell – Michael Drayton
Message: Deals with the loss of a lover – the pained love of a true lover for an
unsympathetic lady.
- The intention is to show the complexity of emotions in a breakup. The speaker tries
to hide his vulnerability yet ultimately reveals his pain and anguish at the thought of
losing his beloved.
Sonnet: abab, cdcd, efef, gg
Tone – it varies:
cruel, clinical, confident then becomes sorrowful, desperate, uncertain, differential.
,Ulysses – Alfred Tennyson
Message: The inevitability of age/death & grief – you cannot fight against them but.
That does not mean you must give up the quest for knowledge and new
experiences. This search is what defines a meaningful life.
- Ulysses’ is an attempt by the poet to come to terms with the great loss he felt at the
death of his dear and close friend. It is a call to go forward and be brave despite the
struggles that life presents.
The theme of the poem is basically simple – one must try to live life to the full at all
times, otherwise, as Ulysses says, life will ‘rust’ and become ‘unburnished’ through
disuse. In other words, a wasted life is dull, empty and unproductive. It is also about
not yielding in the face of grief.
Themes: Mortality & age
Adventure & Knowledge
Caution Vs Recklessness
Heroism & overcoming limitations
Dramatic monologue – gives us a sense of the inner world of the speaker.
Metaphor: ‘I will drink life to the lees’
‘Hungry heart’
‘Drunk delight of battle’
‘Yet all experience is an arch wherethro gleams that untravell’d world’
Assonance: ‘it little profits that an idle king’
‘Matched with an aged wife’
‘Some work of noble note, may yet be done’
Alliteration: ‘hungry heart’
‘And drunk delight of battle’
‘Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;’
Simile: ‘and this gray spirit yearning in desire/ To follow knowledge like a sinking
star, /Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought’
Tone: reflective, contemplative, hopeful, inspirational
My Last Duchess – Robert Browning
Message: The poem criticises the viewpoint of Browning’s era where woman were
objects to be controlled, possessed and then discarded.
Mocks the snobbery and shallowness of the elitist society that think status allows
abuse of power, manipulation and dominance.
The poem is a comment on the patriarchal attitude to women in the Victorian era
where women were controlled. It is also a psychological profile of a psychopath.
Structure: Dramatic monologue
Tone: Colloquial, ignorant, vulgar, insensitive, arrogant
,Nobody loses all the time – E.E. Cummings
Message: even the most unsuccessful people, succeed occasionally.
Uuncle Sol is a failure but he is exceptionally good at failing even when he does not
try he manages to lose which creates a paradox. Uncle Sol always wins when it
comes to losing.
It is a satire of the traditional view of success and argues that success and failure
cannot be easily defined.
To show the absurdity of ordinary life/values/goals/ambitions. It is a slice of life.
Vignette/anecdote, darkly humorous
Cummings was against any form of standardisation. Against stereotypes and
conformity.
Idiosyncratic syntax – peculiar use of words/syntax
Punctuation pun –‘somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my uncle
Sol
and started a worm farm)
mimics the coffin being lowered into the ground
Tone: Macabre, satirical, tone-in-cheek
Refugee blue – W.H Auden
Message: The poem considers the experiences of Jewish Refugees fleeing from
Nazi Germany in the build-up to WWII
-Explores the German persecution of the Jewish population prior and during World
War II.
Mistreatment of people is man-made.
We need to be careful about indifference.
Xenophobia – fear of strangers.
Express the hostility and antagonism which German Jews were faced with.
Bitter critique of ordinary evil. We are faced with the responsibility that suffering is
preventable. In the chilling context of the poem, the world did not heed this warning.
What is a refugee?
A person forced to leave his/her country to escape war/persecution.
Onomatopoeia – ‘thunder rumbling in the sky’
The threat of WWII is brewing.
Metaphor – ‘It was Hitler over Europe, saying “They must die”:’
Hitler’s rhetoric (persuasive language) is being compared to thunder that is roaring.
Hyperbole – ‘Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors’
‘A thousand windows and a thousand doors’
Pathetic fallacy – ‘stood on a great plain in the falling snow;’
They have been frozen out of society.
Tone: hopeless, anguish, bleak, intimate, despair.
,To night – Percy Shelley
A lyrical poem that expresses emotions from a personal viewpoint. Longing for the
night. Diction: apostrophe: he addresses the night directly. Extended personification.
The night becomes a supernatural, superhuman force in the poem, with an agency
(power) of its own. Traditionally, night is associated with death, despair and
sadness, yet ironically, the speaker associates the night with peace and
solitude. Shelley sees the night granting him imagination and stimulation. It is also a
place where he can hide himself.
Personification: ‘swiftly walk over the western wave,’
Night is being personified.
‘thy sweet child Sleep’ – sleep is personified as night’s child
Metaphor: ‘star-inwrought’
The starry night is being compared to a clock worn by night – the stars are sewn into
the sky.
Simile: ‘Lingering like an unloved guest’
‘Murmur’d like a noontide bee’
Tone: yearning, desperate, melancholic
Portrait of a loaf of Bread – Mtshali
Message: conscientizes the reader about : inequality, class division, mistreatment of
the working class
Intention/message/meaning: Conscientizing us and making us aware of class
consciousness and divisions. Gratitude and the value of bread. Privileged versus
underprivileged. He is criticising society’s lack of awareness of poverty/the labourer’s
plight. He also makes the point that simplicity can be met with gratitude.
Metaphor – ‘mountains of dough’
The piles of dough are so large they have been compared to mountains.
Simile – ‘and spat into pans as red hot as Satan’s cauldron’
The heat of the pan is compared to the heat of Satan’s cauldron – discomfort and
forceful work.
Allusion- ‘reaper’s scythe’
Grim Reaper = harvester of souls (personifies death)
‘”Man can live on bread alone”
An allusion to Matthew 4:4 ‘man shall not live by bread alone’ = he is not sustained
by bread he needs more (spiritual need/emotional needs etc.)
Tone: Candid, critical, frank
,Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen
Message: Owen explores the meaninglessness/futility and pity of war, revealing the
horrific realities endured by the soldiers. This is a means of challenging the lies of
war heroic and noble.
Owen’s intention is to increase our awareness of the horror, pain and fear of war. He
wishes to make his audience aware of the discrepancy between ‘the old Lie’ that war
is noble etc. and the reality of the horror of war.
His central message is to destroy the myth that war is glorious, as encapsulated in
the final two lines of the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est / pro patria mori’.
Dulce Et Decorum Est = It is all sweet and right
Metaphor - ‘Drunk with fatigue’
The feeling of being drunk is compared to complete fatigue and exhaustion that
consumes them
‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning’
The cloud of gas is being compared to a sea- soldiers are enveloped in an endless
wave of gas.
Simile – ‘His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin:’
The look on the soldier’s face is inconceivable.
Tone: Bitter, angry, frantic, callous,
Lost of Found world – Mongane Wally Serote
Message: He encourages the powerless to take control or initiate change. They have
a choice to be active (found - HOPE) or passive (lost - DESPAIR). In solitary
confinement, he learns to see beyond the literal and figurative imprisonment of
Apartheid. The poem’s use of mixed metaphors also alludes to the state’s control
and power of censorship which the poet avoids by ensuring that his poem is cryptic.
(Or else his poem is just obscure!) The poem uses a lot of natural imagery
suggesting that the speaker longs to identify with the harmony and beauty of nature
instead of the unnatural brutality of Apartheid and capitalism
Struggling with identity and hope – will the next generations be able to assert their
identity and achieve equality/justice?
A cyclical response to post-Apartheid SA where economic equality is an enemy of
freedom and hope.
Structure: No set structure: no moral fabric in society = lack of harmony or unjust
treatment. Free verse = longing for freedom from oppression of Apartheid.
Enjambment = his raw emotions. Broken poem = broken society.
Imagery/figures of speech: uses mixed metaphors in order to blur/hide his intention
to promote BC so his work won’t be banned.
Tone: frustrated, pungent, despair, hope, bitterness...
, Touch – Hugh Lewin
Exposes a fractured and brutal prison and Apartheid system. Exposes an Apartheid
society that is riddled with discrimination and injustice. Exploring how post-traumatic
stress is associated with prison. However, despite his inhumane treatment, his
humanity in a brutal system, remains. Hopeful and desires rehabilitation and
humanity. Intensely personal poem about needing to reconnect, physically,
emotionally and psychologically, after the trauma of prison life.
To althea, in prison – Richard Lovelace
Thoughts/imagination/beliefs/love is true freedom. Every stanza ends with the words
‘such liberty’. The contrast between prison and liberty creates a paradox. Paradox is
a seemingly absurd statement, but when looked at more closely, a truth emerges.
E.g. you have to cruel to be kind. However, the mind has freedom to think and
feel how it wishes. It may also be seen as a protest poem. He is rebelling against
his imprisonment and the parliamentarians. In prison, he experiences liberty.
One can never be trapped or constricted if one’s mind is free. – Intellectually
free/emotionally/imaginatively/love/ -poetry -words - intellectual – even if one is
physically bound.
Night song City – Denis Brutus
Message: -The speaker addresses his lover urging her to rest after the difficulties of
a typical SA day. He is calling SA to bring peace against the violence and fear with
which AH has infected it.
-In this poem, Brutus describes himself as a troubadour – a Medieval Knight trying to
help his beloved. He positions South Africa in need of help in order to be restored to
justice. Literally, the speaker addresses a lover, asking her to rest well after the
difficulties of the day.OR: Figuratively, the speaker is calling on South Africans
to find a way to find peace from the violence and horrors of Apartheid, despite
its cruelty. He seems to have a love-hate relationship with South Africa.
Metaphor: ‘police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;’
Police cars are being compared to cockroaches
Simile: ‘Violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed’
Violence is being compare to a bug
‘fear is imminent as sound in the wind-swung bell;’
Fear is being compared to bells that ring in the wind= A bell is guaranteed to ring in
the wind
Tone: two-fold
Soothing, gentle, tender, tranquil
Despair, anguish, terror, fear, distress
