Week 3: Poetry Practical Worksheet

Do this worksheet in Word on your computer, save the file, then go to clickUP
and look for the folder “Worksheets: submit via Turnitin”. In there you will find
information about how to submit work to Turnitin – as well as the link via which
to upload “Week 3 worksheet” to the system.

The closing date and time for the worksheet is 8 pm on Wednesday 8th March
2023. No late submissions can be accepted, so be sure to upload your worksheet
well before the deadline.

Read the following poem carefully and then answer the questions below. (Type your
answers and number them 1 to 11. Use your own words.)

From The Temple (1633), by George Herbert (Norton, p. 396 [6th ed.]/p.375 [5th ed.]):

Vertue

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.

5 Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

10 A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber, never gives;
15 But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
Please notice how these questions follow the structure provided in the
‘Guidelines to Writing about a Poem’. In your test, you will probably have to
write an essay on a poem and you should structure it in the same way, though
without headings.

The First Paragraph of an Essay

1) In no more than four sentences, one for each stanza of the poem,
summarise Herbert's argument.
2) Read the short biography of Herbert in The Norton Anthology or google
George Herbert. What have you learned that helps you to understand the
poem?

The Second Paragraph of an Essay

3) Briefly describe the structure of the poem paying attention to genre,
rhyme, metre and other structural features.
Guidelines for Looking at Sounds, Images and Effects in the Body of an Essay
4) Identify two examples of alliteration in the poem's first line. What effect
do they create?
5) Identify two examples of personification in the first stanza. What effect do
they create?
6) What is the function of the description of the rose in the second stanza.
How does its life relate to ours? Name the figure of speech used here?
7) What is the significance of the reference to music in line 11?
8) Describe how repetition is used in the first three stanzas of the poem.
9) What two repeated phrases change in the last stanza and what is the effect of
each change?
10)Name the image used in line 14. Why is it effective?

Conclusion
11)What is the theme of the poem?