Lesson Plans

Assignment to have been completed: Students should have read “Break, break, break” by Tennyson pp. 859-860. They should also have written out answers to the three questions that follow that poem.

Objectives:

1. To apply rhythm, meter, verse, prose, foot, iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, spondee, monosyllabic syllable, line, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter, and scansion as needed
2. To recognize these elements and measurements in poetry
3. To scan a poem correctly to enhance the reading aloud of the poem
4. To explain their effect on meaning

Activities:

• A. Have one of the students read “Break, break, break,” p. 939 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. In lines 3-4 the speaker wishes he could put his thought into words. Does he make those thoughts explicit in the course of the poem?

    He does but not until halfway through the third stanza where we learn that it is grief for some very beloved person who is irrevocably gone.

  • 2. What aspects of life are symbolized by the two images in stanza 2? By the image in lines 9-10? How do lines 11-12 contrast with those images?

    The first two lines offer images that symbolize childhood “the fisherman’s boy” playing “with his sister.” The “sailor lad” symbolizes late adolescence or early adulthood.

    The images in lines 11-12 evoke memories of the dead.

  • 3. The basic meter of this poem is anapestic, and all but two lines are trimeter. Which two? What other variations from a strict anapestic trimeter do you find? How many lines (and which ones) display a strict anapestic pattern? With this much variation, would you be justified in calling the poem free verse? Do the departures from a strict metrical norm contribute to the meaning?

    The two tetrameter lines are 11 and 15.

    The most obvious and most memorable departures from a strictly anapestic form are, of course, the monosyllabic lines that begin the first and last stanzas.

    Lines 6, 8, and 12 are perfectly regular anapestic trimeter.

    This is not free verse; it has a definite metrical beat throughout.

    The broken meter evokes the broken heart.

Assignment for next class meeting: Read “Chapter Fourteen – Pattern,” pp. 881-889. Write out responses to the first three items under Reviewing Chapter Fourteen on page 889.