Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day

William Shakespeare

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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 oft' 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 owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

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

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

1) Associate 5 words with the term ‘SUMMER’.

2) Explain the title of the sonnet.

3) What kind of person is described in the poem?

4) In what ways can we relate the sonnet with different angels of love?

5) Make your own metaphorical statement about your loved ones. Defend your answer.

Sonnet 116

Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

1) What are the characteristics of a lighthouse?

2) Explain the reason for comparing true love from a lighthouse.

3) Give a metaphorical statement about true love.

4) Do you agree that we may be able to measure love in some degree, but this does not mean that we fully understand it? Why?

5) Which line do you believe has the sweetest statement?

Never Give Up

Never Give Up

Juan Carlos Abeti

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As I walk,

On the empty streets,

Being accompanied by

The leaves

Of the trees

In the Autumn,

The season and of my life,

Not so free…

Wondering why the wind

Blows away the leaves

From the trees

But not my pain,

That in my heart remains…

Asking to myself

How I’ll go along

Without my other one

Why life took her away from me?

Why a better future should I believe in?

A coward to live and a coward to die…

There’s no reason to continue or

there is?...

I do not know what

Will become of me,

Afraid from the present,

For the future not caring…

As I keep walking…

To nowhere.

But I will

Never give up

On life,

Even if it seems

Too dark,

The sun will

Always shine

After the storm

Passed by…

My Country

My Country

Dorothea Mackellar

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The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless againThe drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

 

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

1) How many stanzas does the poem have?

2) What figures of speech are used in every stanza? What purpose did it serve?

3) Explain the title of the poem.

4) What line shows the most intense love for a country? Explain.

The Land of the Great Fines

The Land of the Great Fines

Mao Tse Tung

Translated by: Robert Payne

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Red orange yellow green blue purple.

Who flings the rainbow through the dancing air?

We wander through a pass in the black mountains

The sun slant after the rains.

That year we fought so many heavy battles

And the village walls pierced with bullets

Today the colors of the mountain pass

Shine more splendid.

I Built my own House near Where others Dwell

Tao Chien translated by William Acker

I built my house where others dwell

And yet there is no clamor of carriages or horses.

You ask of me “How can this be so?”

“When the heart is for the place of itself is distant.”

I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge

And gaze a far towards the southern mountains.

The mountain air is fine at evening of the day

And flying birds return to jerker homewards

Within these things there is a hint of Truth,

But when I started to tell it, I can’t find the words.

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

1) Who translated the poem into English?

2) What kind of land can you infer?

3) Read aloud the last two lines of the poem. Explain.

4) What is the theme of the poem?

5) What message can we get from the poem?

The Analect

The Analect

Confucius

            “Once the master remarked, “I have conversed with Hwui the whole day long, and he has controverter nothing that I have said, as if he were without his wits. But when his back was turned, and I looked attentively at his conduct apart from me, I found it satisfactorily in all its issues. No, indeed! Hwui is not without his wits.

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

1) Who are the characters in the analect?

2) Explain the last sentence of the analect.

3) What kind of man is Hwui? Why?

4) What important lesson can we get from the analect?

5) Give another instances that a person is judge according to his actions.

Dry Your Tears Africa

Dry Your Tears Africa

Bernard Dadie

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Dry your tears, Africa!

Your Children come back to you

Out of the storm and squalls of fruitless journeys

Through the crest of the waves and the bubbling of the breeze,

Over the gold of the East

and the Purple of the setting Sun,

the peaks of the proud mountains

and the grasslands drenched with light

They return to you

out of the storm and squalls of fruitless journeys

Dry your tears, Africa!

We have drunk

From all the springs of ill fortune and of glory

And our senses are now opened

To the splendour of your beauty 

To the smell of your forests

To the charm of your waters

To the clearness of your skies

To the cares of your sun

And to the charm of your foliage pearled by the dew

Dry your tears, Africa!

Your children come back to you

Their hand full of playthings

And their heart full of love

They return to clothe you

In their dreams in their hopes

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

1) Who is the author of the poem?

2) What do tears symbolize? Explain.

3) Why do you think the title of the poem is ‘Dry Your Tears Africa’?

4) Read aloud the last two lines of the poem. What is meant by that part?

5) What important message can we get from the poem?

6) In what ways can we relate the poem to our country? Explain.

7) Change the title of the poem and explain your reason.