The Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed- but litte thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of soltitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
In class we read the poem to ourselves, then aloud. We decoded the pattern and focused on interesting words or words we were unsure of. The boys had such fantastic indepth conversations with each other about the meaning of different lines.
As you can see the pattern is what we call an A, B, A, B, C, C poem. In other words line 1 and 3 have a rhyming word at the end of the line, line 2 and 4 have a rhyming word at the end of the line; and lines 5 and 6 have a rhyming word at the end of their lines.
Another important thing to remember about poems like these are that they have a beat a bit like music. The beat is created by the syllables from each line. Boys practised their syllables by making the beats to their names as well as the lines.
Our class will now be writing our own poems based on the patterns of the poem above. We too will be focusing on beauty in nature, however we will be writing ours about the Swan River.
Some boys will be catching up on this session next week (who have been absent) and will need to write their own poems for homework. In class with the boys who are here we will be brainstorming words about the Swan River and finding other words that rhyme with them. I will put that list on the blog next week so help those boys writing their at home.
