Power and Conflict poetry

• Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes Key quotes:

  "Suddenly he awoke"

  "Bullets smacking the belly out of the air -He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;"

  "In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations"

  "Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame"

  "His terror’s touchy dynamite."
• Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley key quotes:

  "I met a traveller from an antique land"

  "And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,"

  "The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;"

  ""My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

  "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck,"
• London by William Blake Key quotes:

  "I wander thro' each charter'd street,"

  "Marks of weakness, marks of woe."

  "The mind-forged manacles I hear."

  "Runs in blood down Palace walls."

  "And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse."
• the Prelude by William Wordsworth key quotes:

  "One summer evening (led by her)"

  "Small circles glittering idly in the moon,Until they melted all into one trackOf sparkling light."

  "When, from behind that craggy steep till thenThe horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,"

  "And through the silent water stole my wayBack to the covert of the willow tree;"

  "But huge and mighty forms, that do not liveLike living men,"

  "were a trouble to my dreams"
• My Last Duchess by Robert Browning Key quotes:

  "(since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)"

  "too soon made glad,"

  "as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift."

  "and I choose Never to stoop"

  "I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. "
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson Key quotes:

  "Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward,"

  "Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd:"

  "Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them:"

  "Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell"

  "Rode the six hundred."

  "Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade Noble six hundred!"
• Exposure by Wilfred Owen Key Quotes:

  "Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us..."

  "But nothing happens."

  "Like twitching agonies of men"

  "We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy."

  "For love of God seems dying."
• Storm on the Island by Seamus Heaney Key quotes:

  "We are prepared: we build our houses squat,"

  " wizened earth "

  "pummels your house too."

  "spits like a tame cat Turned savage."

  "We are bombarded with the empty air."

  "Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear."
• Poppies by Jane Weir Key Quotes:

  "spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer."

  "Blackthorns of your hair"

  "The world overflowing like a treasure chest. A split second and you were away. Intoxicated"

  " Released a songbird from it's cage"

  "Playground Voice"
• War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy Key quotes:

  "Spools of suffering"

  "The only light is red and softly glows,"

  "preparing to intone a Mass."

  "All flesh is grass."

  "to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,"

  "which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat."
• Remains by Simon Armitage key quotes:

  "On another occasion"

  "And one of them legs it up the road, probably armed, possibly not."

  "every round as it rips through his life –"

  "His blood-shadow stays "

  "his bloody life in my bloody hands."
• Tissue by Imtiaz Dharker key quotes:

  "the back of the Koran, where a hand has written in the names and histories"

  "pages smoothed and stroked and turned transparent with attention."

  "If buildings were paper, I might ...see how easily they fall away on a sigh,"

  "The sun shines through their borderlines, "

  "let the daylight break through capitals and monoliths,"

  ""never meant to last,"
• The Emigree by Carol Rumens key quotes:

  " I left it as a child but my memory of it is sunlight-clear"

  "It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants, but I am branded by an impression of sunlight."

  "as time rolls its tanks and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves."

  "They accuse me of being dark in their free city."

  "my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight."
• Checking out me history by John Agard Key quotes:

  "Dem tell me"

  "Bandage up me eye with me own history Blind me to me own identity"

  "And de cow who jump over de moon"

  "A healing star ... A yellow sunrise"

  "I carving out me identity"
• Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland Key quotes:

  "a shaven head full of powerful incantations"

  "the dark shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun"

  "a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous."

  "that this was no longer the father we loved."

  "which had been the better way to die."