In this lesson…

Learning Goals:
• Understand the features and characteristics of Landscape Poetry and
how to compare them

Success Criteria:
• I can identify key features and characteristics
• I can analyse and deconstruct a landscape poem
• I can compare and contrast features of poems
Characteristics and Features of Landscape
Poetry
Theme & Tone
Theme: An idea that is repeatedly represented throughout a work.

A theme in Star Wars is “good vs evil”.

Tone: The author’s attitude toward the subject. It can be found in the
writer’s word choice and literary devices.

The tone of the comedy was light and humourous.

Comparing Landscape Poems
There was a Time: The Youth,
Randolph Stowe
Subject: Colonial history of Australia, the Past and
the Present, in story/landscape form – comparing
landscapes
Language Features/Literary Devices and why they’re
used: Repetition (“There was a time”, “I remember”,
“remember”); Personal Pronouns (“I”); Imagery
(Describing the landscape; Contrasting/comparing
two times vividly); Plot (story about the landscape)
Tone: Reflective; Solemn
Theme: Loss; Colonialism; Regret; Past Vs Present,
Peace and Conflict (Contrast)
My Country, Dorothea Mackellar
Subject: Dorothea’s love for Australia; its landscape in
particular
Language Features/Literary Devices and why they’re
used: Imagery (Describing Australia’s landscape,
realistic but vivid interpretation); Repetition (“I love”,
“Core of my heart, my country”, “country”); Emotive
Language
Tone: Loving; Appreciative; Earnest; Admiring;
Celebratory
Theme: Love of Country/Nature; Seasons; Fickleness
of Nature
Constructing
Comparativ
e Sentences
There was a time: The youth, Randolph
Stowe
1. There was a time, but I do not
remember,
when this warm-reeking woolshed was
a fortress,
the wall-slits slits for muskets, and my
parents
sentries alert against the shadowy clans.
I remember only peace, the predicted
harvests,
the shadows dwindling beneath our
ascending sun.
2. There was a time of shepherds on heath-
wild hills,
uncleared, unfenced; a rough camp at the
homestead
where there were always strangers whose
names were suspect
and screeching laughter of gins from the
dying horde.
I remember only this cool stone house in
the paddocks,
raised among olives and palms to my
father’s name.
There was a time: The youth, Randolph
Stowe
3. Thepenned sheep wait for the shears,
and the drays depart
weighed down with bales for the white
coast and the steamer;
the May rains come and the harrows
pursue the seeding,
the harvest winds ripen orchard and
corn alike.
Grain, tree and beast bring forth in their
proper season,
and overnight parsons give thanks in the
candlelight.
4. My father has faltered in nothing; his
hearth is established,
his sons are grown; we shall reap the
predicted harvests.
Only I, riding the flat-topped hills alone,
feel in the inland wind the sing of
desert,
and under alien skin the surge, the
stirring,
a wisdom and a violence, the land’s dark
blood.
My Country, Dorothea MacKellar
1. Thelove 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.
2.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!
My Country, Dorothea MacKellar
3. 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!
4.
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 again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
My Country, Dorothea MacKellar
5. Coreof 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.
6.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.
South of My Days, Judith Wright
1. South of my days' circle, part of my blood's
country,
rises that tableland, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the winter,
low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping
granite-
clean, lean,  hungry country. The creek's leaf-
silenced,
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and
crabapple
branching over and under, blotched with a green
lichen;
and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.
2. O cold the black-frost night. The walls draw in to
the warmth
and the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle
hisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that
summer will turn up again some day in a wave of
rambler-roses,
thrust it's hot face in here to tell another yarn-
a story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the
winter.
Seventy years of stories he clutches round his
bones.
Seventy years are hived in him like old honey.
South of My Days, Judith Wright
3. Droving that year, Charleville to the Hunter,
nineteen-one it was, and the drought beginning;
sixty head left at the McIntyre, the mud round
them
hardened like iron; and the yellow boy died
in the sulky ahead with the gear, but the horse
went on,
stopped at Sandy Camp and waited in the evening.
It was the flies we seen first, swarming like bees.
Came to the Hunter, three hundred head of a
thousand-
cruel to keep them alive - and the river was dust.
4. Or mustering up in the Bogongs in the autumn
when the blizzards came early. Brought them
down; we
brought them down, what aren't there yet. Or
driving for Cobb's on the run
up from Tamworth-Thunderbolt at the top of
Hungry Hill,
and I give him a wink. I wouldn't wait long, Fred,
not if I was you. The troopers are just behind,
coming for that job at the Hillgrove. He went like a
luny, him on his big black horse.
South of My Days, Judith Wright
5. Oh, they slide and they vanish
as he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror's
cards.
True or not, it's all the same; and the frost on the
roof
cracks like a whip, and the back-log break into ash.
Wake, old man. This is winter, and the yarns are
over.
No-one is listening
South of my days' circle
I know it dark against the stars, the high lean
country
full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.
South of My Days, Judith Wright
1. Describe what the poem is about.

2. Highlight the imagery, then the other poetic language features.

3. What is Judith Wright's perception of:

1. The landscape of Australia?
2. The people of Australia?
3. How the people and the landscape exist together?

4. Select a landscape poem that we have studied so far. Explain the difference between
the poet’s attitude toward the landscape in this poem and in the other poem?