The Echoing Green

When you use figurative language, you say or write something in a creative way. Your writing goes beyond the literal meaning of your words.

Metaphor and simile are two types of figurative language. Both use comparisons.

A simile compares two things that are alike in some way using the words "like" or "as."

Metaphors do not use the words "like" or "as" and instead suggest that one thing is the other.

Writers use personification when they give a human quality to something nonhuman.

Which of the excerpts is an example of personification?

• Well, son, I'll tell you:/ Life for me ain't been no crystal stair./ It's had tacks in it,/ And splinters,/ And boards torn up,/ And places with no carpet on the floors/ Bare.

• I'd love to take a poem to lunch/ or treat it to a wholesome brunch/ of fresh cut fruit and apple crunch.

• I wandered lonely as a cloud/ That floats on high o'er vales and hills,/ When all at once I saw a crowd,/ A host, of golden daffodils;

• The Moon's a snowball. See the drifts/ Of white that cross the sphere./ The Moon's a snowball, melted down/ A dozen times a year.

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. We can describe rhyme scheme using letters to indicate different rhymes.

Read the excerpt from the poem "The Ecchoing Green" by William Blake.

The sun does arise,

And make happy the skies.

The merry bells ring

To welcome the Spring.

What is the rhyme scheme in this poem?

• ABAB

• ABAC

• ABBA

• AABB

In the poem, "The Echoing Green", what arises at the beginning of the poem and descends at the end?

• oak tree

• sun

• bird

• bell

What is the setting of the poem "The Echoing Green"?

• a bush where birds live

• the nest of a bird

• the home of Old John

• the echoing Green

Reread the 2nd stanza of "The Echoing Green".

Old John, with white hair,

Does laugh away care,

Sitting under the oak,

Among the old folk.

They laugh at our play,

And soon they all say,

"Such, such were the joys

When we all--girls and boys--

In our youth-time were seen

On the echoing Green."

What can you infer from this stanza about Old John?

• Old John spends most of his time worrying.

• Old John likes being an old man more than he liked being a boy.

• Old John does not get along well with the other old folk.

• Old John used to play on the echoing Green.

Who or what are "the little ones" in line 21 of "The Echoing Green"?

• mothers

• old folk

• young birds

• boys and girls

Repeating words to show importance

• rhyme scheme

• repetition

• rhyme scheme

Lines of poetry may be arranged into groups that are called ___

• forms

• line

• stanzas

Structure is...

• The way a poem sounds

• A simile

• The way a poem's words and lines are laid out on a page

• How a poem functions

__________ is a series of beats in a poem.

• rhythm

• stanza

• lines