Aims:
1. Get the Students to know more about poetry.
2. Learn the pattern of a limerick and guide the students to write one.
Teaching Procedures
I. Warming up
1. Ask students to read some English poems or songs or rhymes.
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Imagine by John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people living for today...
Imagine there’s no country,
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people living life in peace...
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people sharing all the world...
You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
An English nursery rhyme童謠
I saw a fishpond all on fire;
I saw a house bow to a squire(向侍從鞠躬);
I saw a parson(牧師) twelve feet high;
I saw a cottage near the sky;
I saw a balloon, made of lead(鉛);
I saw a coffin(棺材) drop down dead;
I saw a sparrow(麻雀) run a race;
I saw two horses making lace(緞帶);
I saw a girl just like a cat;
I saw a kitten wear a hat;
I saw a man who saw them too,
And says, though strange, they all are true.
2. Ask students whether they like poetry or not and tell why (not).
3. Learn to write a limerick.
1) Read the 2 limericks on P25.
2) What is a limerick?
A limerick a special, funny poem.
Rhyme scheme: aabba
Pattern: 5 lines, about 7 syllables in each line.
Line 1: introduce a certain person from a certain place
Line 2: give special information or a wish of the person
Line 3: describe some complication（復雜）or difficulty
Line 4: ditto
Line 5: (punch line妙語) reveal what’s wrong
3) Try to write one or two according to the template（模板）
Template - A:
There once was a ______________ from __________________.
All the while he hoped _______________________________.
So he _______________________________.
______________________________________.
_________________________________________.
Template - B:
I once met a _________________ from ___________________.
Every day she _______________________________________.
But whenever she ______________________.
________________________________.
______________________________________.
4. More limericks for students to read.
5. Language points
1) board: to enter or go aboard (a vehicle or ship) 上車,上船進入或登上（交通工具或船）
eg. go on board上船; 上飛機, 上火車
2) as mad as a door: crazy
II. Listening
1. Brainstorm:
How do you find and choose poems to read from a library?
A problem for many people who would like to read poetry is that they don’t know where to start. If you haven’t read much poetry, it is difficult to make a choice. Names of poets may be unfamiliar, and it is hard to predict whose poems you will like. It is not only difficult for students but also for matures reader. For this reason, anthologies are often published. An anthology is a collection of poems. Anthologies are often either a choice of the best poems by one poet, or a collection of poems about a certain theme, eg. Love, humor, friendship, nature, 18th century or women poets. Presenting poems in this way helps people choose what to read. Often, having found and read a poem in an anthology leads to readers becoming more interested to read more of an author. Reading poetry in anthologies also helps building a habit of reading poetry.
2. Listen to the tape for the first time and finish Ex. 1
3. Listen to the tape for the second time and finish Ex. 2
4. Listen to the tape for the third time and finish Ex. 3
III. Homework
Student’s Sheet
Warming up-Write a Limerick Unit 4 BII
Name _____ Class ___ Number __
1. Read some English poems or songs or rhymes.
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Imagine by John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people living for today...
Imagine there’s no country,
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people living life in peace...
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people sharing all the world...
You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
An English nursery rhyme童謠
I saw a fishpond all on fire;
I saw a house bow to a squire(向侍從鞠躬);
I saw a parson(牧師) twelve feet high;
I saw a cottage near the sky;
I saw a balloon, made of lead(鉛);
I saw a coffin(棺材) drop down dead;
I saw a sparrow(麻雀) run a race;
I saw two horses making lace(緞帶);
I saw a girl just like a cat;
I saw a kitten wear a hat;
I saw a man who saw them too,
And says, though strange, they all are true.
2. Write a limerick
1) Read the 2 limericks on P25.
2) What is a limerick?
A limerick is a _______, ________ poem.
Rhyme scheme:_________
Pattern: ___ lines, about _____ syllables in each line.
Line 1: ____________________________________________
Line 2: ____________________________________________
Line 3: ____________________________________________
Line 4: ____________________________________________
Line 5: (punch line妙語) _____________________________
3) Try to write one or two according to the template（模板）
Template - A:
There once was a ______________ from __________________.
All the while he hoped _______________________________.
So he _______________________________.
And _________________________________.
_______________________________________.
Template - B:
I once met a _________________ from ___________________.
Every day she _______________________________________.
But whenever she ______________________.
______________________________.
_________________________________________.
More Reading for Unit 4 Book II
Name______ Class ____ No.____
http://home.earthlink.net/~kristenaa/faves.html
Submitted By: Merriam
In a castle that had a deep moat
Lived a chicken a duck and a goat.
They wanted to go out
And wander about
But all they needed was a boat.
Submitted By: Karen McCombie
There was a young girl from Oliver,
And all the men did follow her,
Until a guy came along,
And played her his song,
And all the rest quit call'n her.
Submitted By: Janice Brady
There once was a man from Bombay
who wore on his head a toupee.
He thought that he might
give friends a delight
and remove his toupee for a day.
Submitted By: LAURA BLACK
There one was a man from Peru,
Who dreamed of eating his shoe,
he awoke with a fright,
in the middle of the night,
and found that his dream had come true!
Submitted By: Simhika Rao
There was a farmer from Leeds,
Who ate six packets of seeds,
It soon came to pass,
He was covered with grass,
And he couldn't sit down for the weeds!
(author unknown)
There once was a man from Great Britain
Who interrupted two girls at their knittin'.
Said he with a sigh,
"That park bench, well I
Just painted it right where you're sittin'."
(author unknown)
There was a young hunter named Shepherd
Who was eaten for lunch by a leopard.
Said the leopard, "Egad!
You'd be tastier, lad
If you had been salted and peppered!"
Ogden Nash
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "let us flee!"
"Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
(author unknown)
There was a young woman named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.
(author unknown)
An epicure dining at Crewe
Found a very large bug in his stew.
Said the waiter, "Don't shout
And wave it about,
Or the rest will be wanting one too."
________________________________________
Loony Limericks / webmaster@loonies.zzn.com / revised October 1998
Period 2 (Unit 4 BII) Speaking
Aims:
1. Familiar students with different categories of poetry.
2. Practise expressing intention using the expressions of the following:
I’m interested to … but …
I think I might want to …
I want to …
I’d like to …
I’ve never heard of … so …
I’ve never read any … so …
I think it will be too difficult / boring to …
I’m (not) very interested in … so
I hope to find …
I don’t know much about … but …
Teaching Procedures
I. Speaking
1. Words or phrases relate to poetry and poets.
Category Words and phrases
Style Funny, serious, romantic, fantasy, love
Form Lines, words, syllables, rhyme, rhythm, sound
Human feelings Love, death, happiness, loneliness, sadness, humour, broken heart
Topics (themes) Fantasy, the sea, drinking wine, war, friendship, pets, the nature, peace
Periods Song Dynasty, Romantic 18th century classical, Modern
Poets Du Fu, Li Bai, George Gordon Byron, Robert Frost, John Keats, Shakespeare, Japanese / Chinese /African American
(P82)
2. Go through useful expressions and example on P27.
3. Ask the students to make dialogues.
(Sample dialogue)
II. Homework
More information about poets:
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the son of Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon. He was born with a club-foot and became extreme sensitivity about his lameness. Byron spent his early childhood years in poor surroundings in Aberdeen, where he was educated until he was ten. After he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798, he went on to Dulwich, Harrow, and Cambridge, where he piled up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs. Staying at Newstead in 1802, he probably first met his half-sister, Augusta Leigh with whom he was later suspected of having an incestuous relationship.
In 1807 Byron's first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness appeared. It received bad reviews. The poet answered his critics with the satire English Bards And Scotch Reviewersin 1808. Next year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, and the Aegean. Real poetic success came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818). He became an adored character of London society; he spoke in the House of Lords effectively on liberal themes, and had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron's The Corsair (1814), sold 10,000 copies on the first day of publication. He married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter Ada was born in the same year. The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal separation next year.
When the rumors started to rise of his incest and debts were accumulating, Byron left England in 1816, never to return. He settled in Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire Clairmont, who became his mistress. There he wrote the two cantos of Childe Harold and "The Prisoner of Chillon". At the end of the summer Byron continued his travels, spending two years in Italy. During his years in Italy, Byron wrote Lament of Tasso, inspired by his visit in Tasso's cell in Rome, Mazeppa and started Don Juan, his satiric masterpiece. While in Ravenna and Pisa, Byron became deeply interested in drama, and wrote among others The Two Foscari, Sardanapalaus, Cain, and the unfinished Heaven and Earth.
After a long creative period, Byron had come to feel that action was more important than poetry. He armed a brig, the Hercules, and sailed to Greece to aid the Greeks, who had risen against their Ottoman overlords. However, before he saw any serious military action, Byron contracted a fever from which he died in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. Memorial services were held all over the land. Byron's body was returned to England but refused by the deans of both Westminster and St Paul's. Finally Byron's coffin was placed in the family vault at Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no record of his birth, but his baptism was recorded by the church, thus his birthday is assumed to be the 23 of April. His father was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and was later granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds. All that is known of Shakespeare's youth is that he presumably attended the Stratford Grammar School, and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge. The next record we have of him is his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582. The next year she bore a daughter for him, Susanna, followed by the twins Judith and Hamnet two years later.
Seven years later Shakespeare was recognized as an actor, poet, and playwright, when a rival playwright, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow" in "A Groatsworth of Wit." A few years later he joined up with one of the most successful acting troupes in London: "The Lord Chamberlain's Men." When, in 1599, the troupe lost the lease of the theatre where they performed (appropriately called "The Theatre"), they were wealthy enough to build their own theatre across the Thames, south of London, which they called "The Globe." The new theatre opened in July of 1599, built from the timbers of "The Theatre", with the motto "Totus mundus agit histrionem" (A whole world of players). When James I came to the throne (1603) the troupe was designated by the new king as the "King's Men" (or "King's Company"). The Letters Patent of the company specifically charged Shakespeare and eight others "freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Interludes, Morals, Pastorals, stage plays ... as well for recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure."
Shakespeare entertained the King and the people for another ten years until June 19, 1613, when a canon fired from the roof of the theatre for a gala performance of Henry VIII set fire to the thatch roof and burned the theatre to the ground. The audience ignored the smoke from the roof at first, being to absorbed in the play, until the flames caught the walls and the fabric of the curtains. Amazingly there were no casualties, and the next spring the company had the theatre "new builded in a far fairer manner than before." Although Shakespeare invested in the rebuilding, he retired from the stage to the Great House of New Place in Statford that he had purchased in 1597, and some considerable land holdings, where he continued to write until his death in 1616 on the day of his 52nd birthday.
John Donne (1572-1631) was the most outstanding of the English Metaphysical Poets and a churchman famous for his spellbinding sermons.
Donne was born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family but converted to Anglicanism during the 1590s. At the age of 11 he entered the University of Oxford, where he studied for three years. According to some accounts, he spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge but took no degree at either university. He began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1592, and he seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic career. Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598. His secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal from this position and in a brief imprisonment. During the next few years Donne made a meager living as a lawyer.
Donne's principal literary accomplishments during this period were Divine Poems (1607) and the prose work Biathanatos (c. 1608, posthumously published 1644), a half-serious extenuation of suicides, in which he argued that suicide is not intrinsically sinful. Donne became a priest of the Anglican Church in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year. In 1621 he was named dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He attained eminence as a preacher, delivering sermons that are regarded as the most brilliant and eloquent of his time.
Donne's poetry embraces a wide range of secular and religious subjects. He wrote cynical verse about inconstancy, poems about true love, Neoplatonic lyrics on the mystical union of lovers' souls and bodies and brilliant satires and hymns depicting his own spiritual struggles. The two "Anniversaries" - "An Anatomy of the World" (1611) and "Of the Progress of the Soul" (1612)--are elegies for 15-year-old Elizabeth Drury.
Whatever the subject, Donne's poems reveal the same characteristics that typified the work of the metaphysical poets: dazzling wordplay, often explicitly sexual; paradox; subtle argumentation; surprising contrasts; intricate psychological analysis; and striking imagery selected from nontraditional areas such as law, physiology, scholastic philosophy, and mathematics.
Donne's prose, almost equally metaphysical, ranks at least as high as his poetry. The Sermons, some 160 in all, are especially memorable for their imaginative explications of biblical passages and for their intense explorations of the themes of divine love and of the decay and resurrection of the body. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) is a powerful series of meditations, expostulations, and prayers in which Donne's serious sickness at the time becomes a microcosm wherein can be observed the stages of the world's spiritual disease.
Obsessed with the idea of death, Donne preached what was called his own funeral sermon, "Death's Duel" just a few weeks before he died in London on March 31, 1631.
John Milton (1608-1674), English poet, famous for his Epic work Paradise Lost (1667).
Milton was born in London on December 9, 1609 as the son of a wealthy notary. He was educated at St. Paul's School. Milton received a Masters degree from Cambridge University in 1632. In 1638, he undertook a European tour where he met many of the major thinkers of the day, especially in Italy.
On his return to England, Milton became a Puritan, and an opponent of the Catholics and of the Stuarts. He was also an ardent polemicist, a follower of Cromwell, and the latter's foreign language secretary. In 1652 he became completely blind. His first wife died in 1652 and he remarried in 1656.
After the restoration of the Stuarts he suffered considerable persecution. He withdrew from active participation in politics and concentrated on his poetry. Paradise Lost was published in 1667, followed by Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in 1671. Among other popular works by Milton are the elegy "Lycidas", Comus, a masque, and the companion pieces "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
Milton died in London on November 12, 1674.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet, credited with ushering in the English Romantic Movement with the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.
With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791.
During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had a illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem "Vaudracour and Julia", but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.
In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth's financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy.
Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published posthumously in 1850 under the title The Prelude.
Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic 'Lucy' poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth's sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life.
Wordsworth's second verse collection, Poems, In Two Volumes, appeared in 1807. Wordsworth's central works were produced between 1797 and 1808. His poems written during middle and late years have not gained similar critical approval. Wordsworth's Grasmere period ended in 1813. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. In later life Wordsworth abandoned his radical ideas and became a patriotic, conservative public man.
In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843) as England's poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.
John Keats (1795-1821), English lyric poet, usually regarded as the archetype of the Romantic writer. Keats felt that the deepest meaning of life lay in the apprehension of material beauty, although his mature poems reveal his fascination with a world of death and decay.
Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795 as the son of a livery-stable manager. He was the oldest of four children, who remained deeply devoted to each other. After their father died in 1804, Keats's mother remarried but the marriage was soon broken. She moved with the children, John and his sister Fanny and brothers George and Tom, to live with her mother at Edmonton, near London. She died of tuberculosis in 1810.
At school Keats read widely. He was educated at Clarke's School in Enfield, where he began a translation of the Aeneid. In1811 he was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary. His first poem, "Lines in Imitation of Spenser", was written in 1814. In that year he moved to London and resumed his surgical studies in 1815 as a student at Guy's hospital. Next year he became a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. Before devoting himself entirely to poetry, Keats worked as a dresser and junior house surgeon. In London he had met the editor of The Examiner, Leigh Hunt, who introduced him to other young Romantics, including Shelley. His poem, "O Solitude", also appeared in The Examiner.
Keats's first book, Poems, was published in 1817. It was about this time Keats started to use his letters as the vehicle of his thoughts of poetry. "Endymion", Keats's first long poem appeared, when he was 21. Keats's greatest works were written in the late 1810s, among them "Lamia", "The Eve of St. Agnes", the great odes including "Ode to a Nightingale", Ode To Autumn" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn". He worked briefly as a theatrical critic for The Champion.
Keats spent three months in 1818 attending his brother Tom, who was seriously ill with tuberculosis. After Tom's death in December, Keats moved to Hampstead. In the winter of 1818-19 he worked mainly on "Hyperion".
In 1820 the second volume of Keats poems appeared and gained critical success. However, Keats was suffering from tuberculosis and his poems were marked with sadness partly because he was too poor to marry Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved.
Declining Shelley's invitation to join him at Pisa, Keats went to Rome, where he died at the age of 25, on February 23, 1821. Keats told his friend Joseph Severn that he wanted on his grave just the line, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was one of the finest of rural New England's 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologized poet. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times.
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. His father, a journalist and local politician, died when Frost was eleven years old. His Scottish mother resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost's paternal grandfather. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Dartmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs.
In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem "My Butterfly" and he had five poems privately printed. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied at Harvard, but left without receiving a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmer, and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school in Plymouth.
In 1912 Frost sold his farm and took his wife and four young children to England. There he published his first collection of poems, A Boy's Will(1913) followed by North Boston (1914), which gained international reputation. The collection contains some of Frost's best-known poems: "Mending Wall," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial," "After Apple-Picking," and "The Wood-Pile."
After returning to the US in 1915 with his family, Frost bought a farm near Franconia, New Hampshire. He taught later at Amherst College (1916-38) and Michigan universities. In 1916 Frost was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In the same year appeared his third collection of verse, Mountain Interval, which contained such poems as "The Road Not Taken," "Birches," and "The Hill Wife." Frost's images - woods, stars, houses, brooks, - are usually taken from everyday life. With his down-to-earth approach to his subjects, readers found it easy to follow the poet into deeper truths, without being burdened with pedantry.
In 1920 Frost purchased a farm in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, near Middlebury College. His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children. Frost also suffered from depression and continual self-doubt. After the death of his wife, Frost became strongly attracted to Kay Morrison, whom he employed as his secretary and adviser. Frost composed for her one of his finest love poems, "A Witness Tree."
Frost participated in the inauguration of President John Kennedy in 1961 by reciting two of his poems. He travelled in 1962 in the Soviet Union as a member of a goodwill group. Over the years he received a remarkable number of literary and academic honors.
At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was regarded as a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the United States.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm
On "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
Alfred R. Ferguson
Perhaps no single poem more fully embodies the ambiguous balance between paradisiac good and the paradoxically more fruitful human good than "Nothing Gold Can Stay," a poem in which the metaphors of Eden and the Fall cohere with the idea of felix culpa. Six versions of the poem exist, the first sent to George R. Elliott in March, 1920, in three eight-line stanzas under the title "Nothing Golden Stays." In this version the poem lacked any Edenic metaphor, reading in the three last lines, "In autumn she achieves / A still more golden blaze / But nothing golden stays." In its first published version, however, in The Yale Review (October 1923), under the present title, the poet caught both the moment of transitory perfection and the sense that the Edenic ideal must give way to earthly dying beauty:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
The poem begins at once in paradox: "green is gold . . . leaf's a flower." At once, common knowledge, precise observation, and the implications of ancient associations are brought into conflicting play. Green is the first mark of spring, the assurance of life; yet in fact the first flush of vegetation for the New England birch and the willow is not green but the haze of delicate gold. Hence green is a theory or sign of spring; gold is the fact. Gold, precious and permanent as a metal, is here not considered as a metal but as a color. Its hue is described as hard to hold, as evanescent as wealth itself.
In the second couplet of the heavily end-stopped poem, paradox is emphasized again, this time in the terms of leaf and flower instead of green and gold. The earliest leaf unfolds in beauty like a flower; but in spite of its appearance, it is leaf, with all the special function of its being, instead of flower. Yet as apparent flower (the comparison is metaphoric rather than a simile-that is, leaf is flower, not leaf resembles or is like flower), the leaf exists in disguise only a moment and then moves on to its true state as leaf. In terms of the two parallel paradoxes, we find the green which appears as gold becoming the real green of leaf; the leaf which appears to be flower with all the possible color of flower becomes the true green of leaf. Our expectations are borne out: apparent gold shifts to green; apparent flower subsides into leaf. But in each case an emotional loss is involved in the changed conditions. The hue of gold with all its value associations of richness and color cannot be preserved. Nor can flower, delicate and evanescent in its beauty, last long; hence we are touched by melancholy when gold changes to green and flower changes to leaf (actually "subsides" or sinks or falls into leaf). Yet in terms of the poem, the thing which metamorphoses into its true self (gold to green of life and flower into leaf which gives life to the tree or plant) undergoes only an apparent or seeming fall. The subsiding is like the jut of water in "West-Running Brook, " a fall which is a rise into a new value. It is with this movement of paradox that Frost arrives at the final term of his argument, developing the parallel between acts within nature and acts within myth. "So Eden sank to grief" with the same imperceptible movement that transformed gold to green and made flower subside to leaf. By analogy the third term in the poem takes on the character of the first two; gold is green; flower is leaf; Eden is grief. In every case the second element is actually a value, a part of a natural process by which the cycle of fuller life is completed.
Thus by the very movement and order of the poem, we are induced to accept each change as a shift to good rather than as a decrease in value; yet each change involves a seeming diminution, a fall stressed in the verbs "subsides" and "sank" as well as in the implicit loss in color and beauty. The sense of a fall which is actually a part of an inherent order of nature, of the nature of the object, rather than being forced unintelligibly and externally, is reinforced as the final natural metaphor recapitulates the first three movements of the argument: "So dawn goes down to day." The pattern of paradox is assured; the fall is really no fall to be mourned. It is a felix culpa and light-bringing. Our whole human experience makes us aware that dawn is tentative, lovely, but incomplete and evanescent. Our expectation is that dawn does not "go down" to day, but comes up, as in Kipling's famous phrase, "like thunder," into the satisfying warmth of sunlight and full life. The hesitant perfections of gold, of flower, of Eden, and finally of dawn are linked to parallel terms which are set in verbal contexts of diminished value. Yet in each case the parallel term is potentially of larger worth. If the reader accepts green leaf and the full sunlight of day as finally more attractive than the transitory golden flower and the rose flush of a brief dawn, he must also accept the Edenic sinking into grief as a rise into a larger life. In each case the temporary and partial becomes more long-lived and complete; the natural cycle that turns from flower to leaf, from dawn to day, balances each loss by a real gain. Eden's fall is a blessing in the same fashion, an entry into fuller life and greater light. Frost, both through language and through structure, has emphasized in "Nothing Gold Can Stay" not merely the melancholy of transitory beauty-of Paradis.
Period 3 (Unit 4 BII) Reading
Aims:
1. Learn a reading strategy : key words
2. Get to know English and American poetry.
Teaching Procedures
I. Pre-reading
1. Ask students to name some famous Chinese poets and ask them to recite some poems if they can.
2. Introduce a reading strategy: key words
1) Key words are the most important words about a topic. Any text about a given topic eill almost certainly be centred around a fair number of key words that are specific to that topic,
2) Ask students to write down five key words that they expect to find in a text about poetry.
3) Ask individual student to tell their key words. Try to find the 5 key words that the students have written most. Write the 5 key words on the blackboard.
( poem, poet, rhyme, style, image, form, line …)
3. Scanning
1) Scan the text and check whether the 5 key words are in the text.
2) Scan the text, answer:
Whose poetry reminds you of Du Fu or Li Bai?
Whose poetry reminds you of Su Dongpo?
( Wordsworth, Byron and Keats - Du Fu and Li Bai
John Donne - Su Dongpo)
II. Reading
1. Read the text and do Exx1, 2.
2. Read again and divide the text into parts.
Part 1 (1) Characteristics of poetry
Part 2 (2) Chinese poetry
Part 3 (3-5) English poetry and poets
Part 4 (6-7) Introduction of English poetry to China
3. Go through each part.
1) Part 1
What’s special of poetry?
*Play with some words and grammar - difficult to write; interesting to read
*Call up all the colours, feelings, experiences and curious images of a dream world
2) Part 2
Chinese poetry
* A long history
* Great poets: Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei
* Form: number of lines
number of characters
Follow special patterns of rhythm and rhyme
3) Part 3 Ex. 3
Make a timeline
16th century: Shakespeare
17th century: John Donne ( Su Dongpo) John Milton
18th century: Alexander Pope
19th century: John Keats, William Wordsworth, George Gordon Byron (Du Fu & Li Bai)
20th century: Robert Frost
4) Part 4
When was English poetry introduced into China?
(between 1910-the late 1930s)
Who introduced them?
(Lu Xun, Guo Moruo)
How did they do it?
(by translating the poems)
Ex 4: If a poem is translated into another language, is it still the same poem? What are some difficulties?
(Some people think that a poem in translation is still the same one while some don’t. Something has lost in translation.)
Ex 6: How do you understand the short poem by Mu Dan?
(Our life is like the night, words in the poetry are like lamps that light up and in the light we can meet and embrace other people who we would never see in the dark.)
Ex 5: To say that “Poems and literature can be bridge” is an image. What other images could you use to express the same idea?
(Poems and literature can bring people closer to each other.
Poetry opens doors. / we can embrace each other in poetry.)
4. Language points
1) play (with sb. / sth.) : do things for pleasure, as children do enjoy oneself, rather than work
eg. play with a ball / toy / bicycle
Little kids like to play with their friends in the gardern.
2) call sb./sth. up: a) telephone sb.
b) bring sth. back to one’s mind; recall sth. 想起；回憶
c) summon sb. for military service; draft sb.征召某人服兵役;選派某人
eg. Please call up tomorrow.
The sound of happy laughter called up memories of his childhood. 這歡笑聲是他回憶起童年時代的情景。
Harry was called up by the police. 哈利被警方傳訊。
3) a long history/ a great time
4) stand out (from sb. /sth.): be much better than sb./ sth. 遠遠超過
eg. His work stands out from the rest as easily the best.他的工作成績遠比其他人都好。
# stand out (from/against sth.): be easily seen; be noticeable 突出；顯眼
eg. Bright lettering stands out well from /against a dark background. 深色背景把字襯托得很醒目。
5) around: being in existence or activity; about
eg. You can see very little of this wine around these days. 這種酒現在已很少看到了。
Many stories of this kind are still around today. 這種故事至今還有很多在流傳。
It is good to have you around. 有你在身邊真好。
6) most: very a most: a very
eg. She is most rude to me. 她對我很粗魯。
This is a most useful book. 這是一本極有用的書。
7) 省略：狀語從句中如其主語與主句的主語一致或為it,同時從句的謂語動詞第一部分為動詞be時，可將從句主語及be 一起省略。
eg. Don’t talk while (you are) eating.
Once (his book was) published, his book became very popular.
Go to him for help when (it is) necessary. 必要的時候向他求助。
She is shy and never speaks unless (she is )spoken to.她很害羞，別人不同