ENGLISH LIT QUOTES + CONTEXT

• OZYMANDIAS QUOTES

  • I met a traveller from an antique land who said
  • Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert
  • Near them on the sand a shattered a visage lies
  • Hand that mocked them
  • Heart that fed
  • And on the pedestal these words appear,
  • My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair
  • Nothing beside remains, near the colossal wreck, boundless and bare
  • Lone and level sands stretch far away
• OZYMANDIAS CONTEXT

  Shelley was expelled from Oxford University for sending a leaflet “the necessity of atheism” to religious figures.

  Shelley was a romantic poet who had a strong dislike of messiah figures/The poem may be seen as a criticism of George III who was considering war at the time
• CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON QUOTES

  • Half a league, half a league, half a league onward
  • Into the valley of death rode the 600
  • Forward the light brigade, charge for the guns they said
  • Someone had blundered
  • Stormed at with shot and shell
  • Boldly they road and well
  • Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell
• CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON CONTEXT

  Tennyson was the Poet Laureate and used his status to spread his opinion on the Light Brigade, that we should honour them, based on an article he read in the newspaper (someone had blundered - came from the newspaper quote “a great blunder”)

  Inspired by the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean war where the generals sent the wrong battalion into a valley full of Russian soldiers. The brigade were all lightly armed, but they still nobly carried out the orders.
• MY LAST DUCHESS BY ROBERT BROWNING QUOTES

  • That’s my last Duchess
  • Looking as if she were alive, I call that piece a wonder now
  • Notice Neptune, taming a sea horse, that claus of innsbruck cast in bronze for me
  • I gave commands and all smiles stopped together
  • Even then would be some stopping, and I choose never to stoop
  • She thanked men, good, but her looks went everywhere
  • Nine hundred year old name
• MY LAST DUCHESS BY ROBERT BROWNING CONTEXT

  Browning had a fascination with Italy, even saying “Cut open my heart and you will see, engraved inside it, Italy.”

  Poem was inspired by the real life Italian Duke Ferrera who was rumoured to have had his wife killed. Browning uses the poem as a criticism of the treatment, oppression and objectifying of women under a patriarchal society.
• EXPOSURE BY WILFRED OWEN QUOTES

  • But nothing happens
  • All their eyes are ice
  • Is it that we are dying? For love of God seems dying
  • Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us
  • Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence
  • We turn back to our dying
  • Slowly our ghosts drag home
• EXPOSURE CONTEXT

  Owen was a romantic poet inspired by the works of Siegfred Sassoon, who encouraged Owen to use his poetic craft to spread his messages, opinions and ideologies with the world, after he was taken into hospital for PTSD/Shellshock

  Owen was a first world war officer and was killed shortly before Armistice Sunday on the 4th November 1918 
• KAMIKAZE BY BEATRICE GARLAND QUOTES

  • Tuna, the dark prince. Muscular, dangerous
  • Enough totems and trinkets for a one way journey into history
  • His boat, yes grandfather’s boat
  • Sometimes he must have wondered, which had been the better way to die
  • Only we children still smiled and laughed
  • Slowly, we too fell silent
  • They treated him as though he no longer existed
• KAMIKAZE BY BEATRICE GARLAND CONTEXT

  Garland is a romantic poet who was born in Oxford and won a poetry prize in 2001

  Poem is inspired by the Japanese first and second world war Kamikaze suicide pilots, who were supposed to pilot their planes as human guided missiles into enemy naval vessels - and their families would be praised and receive honour, riches, wealth and rewards for the pilot’s sacrifice towards the emperor of Japan
• BAYONET CHARGE BY TED HUGHES QUOTES

  • Suddenly he awoke and was running
  • Raw, in raw seamed hot khaki. His sweat heavy
  • In what cold clockwork of the stars and nations, was he the hand pointing that second?
  • King, honour, human dignity et cetera, dropped like luxuries in yelling alarm
  • His terrors touchy dynamite
  • To get out of that blue crackling air
  • He plunged past with his Bayonet towards the green hedge/patriotic tear/ he lugged a rifle as numb as a smashed arm
• BAYONET CHARGE BY TED HUGHES QUOTES

  • Suddenly he awoke and was running
  • Raw, in raw seamed hot khaki. His sweat heavy
  • In what cold clockwork of the stars and nations, was he the hand pointing that second?
  • King, honour, human dignity et cetera, dropped like luxuries in yelling alarm
  • His terrors touchy dynamite
  • To get out of that blue crackling air
  • He plunged past with his Bayonet towards the green hedge/patriotic tear/ he lugged a rifle as numb as a smashed arm
• REMAINS BY SIMON ARMITAGE QUOTES

  • His bloody life in my bloody hands
  • Probably armed, possibly not
  • One of my mates goes by and tosses his guts into the back of lorry
  • On another occasion, we got sent out to tackle looters raiding a bank
  • The drink and the drugs won’t flush him out
  • And he’s probably armed, possibly not. Dream and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds
  • He’s here in my head when I close my eyes, dug in behind enemy lines
• CHECKIN OUT ME HISTORY BY JOHN AGARD QUOTES

  • Dem tell me, dem tell me, wha dem want to tell me
  • Bandage up me my eye to my own history,blind to me own identity
  • Dem tell me bout Dick Whittington and he cat and de moon who run away with the lamp
  • But touissant l’Ouverture, No dem never tell me bout dat
  • Nanny see far woman of mountain dream
  • Toussaint de Beacon of de Haitian revolution
  • I’m checkin’ out me own history/I’m carving out me identity
• THE EMIGREE BY CAROL RUMENS

  • There once was a country, I left it as a child
  • My memory of it is sunlight clear
  • It may now be a lie banned by the state
  • But I am branded by an impression of sunlight
  • My city takes me dancing through the city of walls
  • My city lays down in front of me as docile as paper
  • It may now be at war/it may now be sick with tyrants
• POPPIES BY JANE WEIR QUOTES

  • I listened, hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the window
  • Three days before armistice sunday, and poppies had already been placed on individual war graves.
  • Before you left, I pinned one onto your lapel
  • The dove pulled freely against the sky, an ornamental stitch
  • The world overflowing like a treasure chest
  • Sellotape bandaged around my hand
  • A split second and you were away, intoxicated/I wanted to graze my nose across the tip of your nose. Play at being Eskimos like we did when you were little.
• WAR PHOTOGRAPHER BY CAROL ANNE DUFFY QUOTES

  • A half formed ghost
  • From where, he makes his living and they do not care
  • All flesh is grass
  • As if he were a priest, preparing to intone a mass.
  • Belfast. Beirut. Phenomh. Penh.
  • Their eyes prick with tears 
  • Between their bath and pre-lunch beers.
• STORM ON THE ISLAND BY SEAMUS HEANEY QUOTES

  • We are prepared. We build our houses squat.
  • Space is a salvo. We are bombarded by the empty air.
  • Strange. It is a huge nothing which we fear.
  • Blast. You know what I mean.
  • Exploding comfortably.
  • Spits like a tamed cat turned savage.
  • This wizened earth has never troubled us.
• EXTRACT FROM THE PRELUDE BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH QUOTES

  • One summer evening (led by her) I found a small boat tied to a willow tree. 
  • A huge peak. Black and huge. Towered up between me and the stars.
  • Call it a solitude of dark desertion.
  • I struck and struck again.
  • A rocky cove, it’s usual home.
  • It was an act of stealth and troubled pleasure.
  • Like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were a trouble to my dreams.
  • My mind worked with a dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being.
• LONDON BY WILLIAM BLAKE QUOTES

  • I wonder through each charted street, near where the chartered thame does flow
  • And mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe
  • In every cry, in every man
  • In every newborn infants tear
  • The mind forged manacles I hear
  • Hapless soldiers’ sigh runs in blood down palace walls/Blackened church appals
  • Blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
• MACBETH QUOTES

  • So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
  • Stars hide your fires, let the light not see my dark and deep desires.
  • Two truths are told, as happy prologues to the swelling act
  • I shall be Thane of Cawdor? Why, if chance may have me king - then chance may crown me - without my stir
  • I will not yield!
  • If good, why do I yield to that suggestion - that doth unfix my heart and make it knock on my chest against the use of nature?
  • How now, you secret black and midnight hags?
• The weird sisters: 'The weird sisters, hand in hand, posters of the sea and land. Thus do go about about - thrice to mine and thrice to thine - and thrice again to make up nine. Peace! The charm's wound up.'
• The weird sisters: 'Where shall we three meet again - lightning, thunder or in rain'
• The weird sisters: 'When the hurly burly's done - when the battles' lost and won/that will be 'ere the set of sun/Where the place?/Upon the heath/There to meet with Macbeth'
• The weird sisters: 'All hail Macbeth, hail to thee - Thane of Cawdor'
• The weird sisters: 'Though his bark cannot be lost - yet it shall be… TEMPEST TOSSED!!!'
• Well?: 'We are all members of one body, we are all responsible for each other.'
• Well?: 'Fire and blood and anguish/ One Eva Smith is gone. Many more Eva Smiths and John Smiths remain.'
• (the young ones): 'are the most impressionable'
• “About fifty, a rather cold woman and her husband’s social superior” “girls of that class” ‘you know, my husband was Lord Mayor only two years ago and that he’s still a magistrate’ ‘I’m very sorry. But I think she only had herself to blame’
• “I’ve done nothing wrong – and you know it.” “Go and look for the father of the child. It’s his responsibility.” “She was giving herself ridiculous airs…claiming elaborate fine feelings…that were simply absurd in a girl in her position.” “As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!” “I’m sorry she should have come to such a horrible end. But I accept no blame at all” “he ought to be dealt with very severely-…make sure that he’s compelled to confess in public his responsibility” ‘he certa
• “You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. If you do the Inspector will just break it down. And it’ll be all the worse when he does” “No, he’s giving us the rope- so that we’ll hang ourselves” Bitterly ”I suppose we’re all nice people now” “He inspected us all right.” “It frightens me the way you talk”
• “You’re not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in troublethat’s why.” “Then- you killed her. She came to you to protect me- and you turned her away-yes, and you killed her-and the child she’d have had too- my child- your own grandchild- you killed them both- damn you, damn you-” “He was our police inspector all right” “(shouting) And I say the girl’s dead and we all helped to kill her- and that’s what matters-”