English Poetry

• Ozymandias is a poem about power and time-passing. It is written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and is based on a story Shelley had read about a funeral temple of the Egyptian Pharaoh (Ramases II). Ramases was very powerful and wanted memorials of himself that would last forever. Many of his memorials have now crumbled. Shelley, like Ramases, was concerned with being remembered after death.
• OZYMANDIAS STRUCTURE: 1 stanza of 14 lines (a sonnet) with no rhyme scheme. It is written in Italian and Petrachan style sonnet.
• OZYMANDIAS QUOTES: "Half sunk. A shattered visage lies", "sneer of cold command", "The hand that mocked them", "king of kings", "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay"
• Hawk Roosting is a poem about power and nature. It is written by Ted Hughes and is about a bird of prey. It demonstrates the birds power of destruction, arrogance and superiority. It could symbolise the cruelty of nature and people in positions of power, such as political leaders.
• HAWK ROOSTING STRUCTURE: 6 stanzas, each consisting of 4 lines. Written in free verse.
• HAWK ROOSTING QUOTES: "The convenience of the high trees / The airs buoyancy and the suns ray / Are of advantage to me", "Now I hold Creation in my foot", "I kill where I please because it is all mine", "The sun is behind me", "My eye has permitted no change"
• Mametz Wood is a poem about time passing. It is written by Owen Sheers when he went to the Somme battlefield. Sheers watched people uncover a shallow grave of 20 Allied soldiers who had been buried very quickly, but with linked arms.
• MAMETZ WOOD STRUCTURE: 7 stanzas each consisting of 3 lines. It is written in free verse, with no rhyme scheme.
• MAMETZ WOOD QUOTES: "For years afterwards, the farmers found them", "the relic of a finger", "their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre", "in boots that outlasted them", "only now, with this unearthing / Slipped from their absent tongues"
• Valentine is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy about relationships. Duffy wrote Valentine after a radio producer asked her to write an original poem for St Valentine's Day. Duffy is the first openly LGBTQ+ poet laureate in the UK.
• VALENTINE STRUCTURE: Valetine has 7 stanzas, 3 consisting of 1 line and 4 with 4 lines. It is in free verse and follows no rhyme scheme
• VALENTINE QUOTES: "not a red rose or a satin heart", "it will blind you with tears / like a lover", "possessive and faithful", "its scent will cling to your fingers / cling to your knife"
• The Soldier is a poem by Rupert Brooke about war and nature. It explored the bond between a patriotic British soldier and his homeland. It is a propoganda poem as it only shows the positives of war. The poet had actually never been to war, he died on the way to war from a mosquito bite.
• THE SOLDIER STRUCTURE: The poem is in the style of a sonnet and has iambic pentametre (so symbolise a heart beat). The first stanza follows an ABABCDCD rhyme scheme and the second sollow the rhume scheme EFGEFG.
• THE SOLDIER QUOTES: "a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware", "A body of England's breathing English air", "And think, this heart, all evil shed away", "Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given", "In hearts at peace, under an English heaven"
• The Manhunt is a poem by Simon Armitage about relationships and war. The speaker is a soldier returning from the Bosnian war's wifer (Laura). It is written for a channel 4 documentary, the poem shows the wife of a soldier tending to her husband and trying to reconnect with him. After returning from the war, the soldier had a disfigured face, struggled with PTSD, and attempted to take his own life. The poem accounts Laura tracing the path of a bullet that ricocheted around her husbands body, causing damage.
• THE MANHUNT STRUCTURE: 13 stanzas, each with 2 lines. Irregular rhyme scheme with occasional rhymin couplets.
• THE MANHUNT QUOTES: "only then would he let me explore / the blown hinge of his lower jaw", "to a sweating, unexploded mine / buried deep in his mind", "and feel the hurt / of his grazed heart"