Class Eight English Model Question: Q3

Poem: Success is Counted Sweetest

Poem: The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken

Answer: The Road Not Taken

These metaphors illustrate the poem's central theme: life’s choices and their consequences. The metaphor of the roads captures the essence of decision-making and its lasting effects on one's path in life.

Poem:  Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? 

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

By William Shakespeare 

 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Answer:  Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? 

Question: Whispers of the Horizon

Here is a poem. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

Whispers of the Horizon

The sun is a painter, spreading gold on the sea,

While clouds wear their crowns of soft mystery.

The ocean breathes deeply, with each rolling wave,

Like a tiger asleep, in its watery cave.

The wind is a dancer, spinning wild through the trees,

With the leaves as its partners, swaying free in the breeze.

Mountains stand silent, the guardians of time,

Their peaks are the hands that cradle the sky.

The moon is a lantern, hung high in the night,

Casting its silver web, fragile and bright.

Stars are whispers of stories, told long ago,

Filling the sky with a quiet glow.

And my heart is a compass, drawn to the west,

Where dreams are the wings that never find rest.

With each step I take, the earth hums a song,

Guiding me forward, where I truly belong.

Activity:

Answer to Question: Whispers of the Horizon

Worksheet 1

Here is a part of the poem ‘The Cloud’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

The Cloud

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

Worksheet 2

Here is a part of the poem ‘I Hear America Singing’ by Walt Whitman. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

I Hear America Singing

Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Worksheet 3

Here is a part of the poem ‘To a Skylark’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

Worksheet 4

Here is a part of the poem ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

The Tyger

William Blake

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

Worksheet 5

Here is a part of the poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Worksheet 6

Here isa part of  the poem ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ by William Wordsworth. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

Composed upon Westminster Bridge

William Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Worksheet 7

Here is a part of the poem ‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’ by Walt Whitman. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

A Noiseless Patient Spider

Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Worksheet 8

Here is a part of the poem ‘Kubla Khan’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Worksheet 9

Here is a part of the poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!

Worksheet 10

Here is a part of the poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats. Read it and identify the metaphors used in the poem. Use the following table to complete the activity. 2x5=10

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?