blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving – all come back together.
But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and forever sings he –
“I love my Love, and my Love loves me!”
Vocabulary
linnet – type of finch
thrush – small songbird
brimful – filled to the top edge
1. To whom do the “him” in line 8 and the “he” in line 9 refer?
2. Why is “I love and I love” in line 2 written between quotes?
3. What do the “green leaves”, “blossoms” and “sunny warm weather” in line 5 indicate?
4. What does the word “brimful” in line 7 mean?
5. Why does “love” in line 10 start with a capital letter?
6. The title of the poem is “Answer to a child’s question.” Now after you have read the “answer” in the poem, what do you think was the question that the child asked?
Fairy tale for a runaway
Fanie Viljoen
A fairy tale mostly begins
With Once upon a time,
But this great one begins
With Once upon a rhyme.
A boy once saw an ode
Scribbled on a subway wall.
It told him of a road
And hope for one and all.
All who went along this way
Past the city’s damp decay
Will find hope without an end
Will have their broken hearts all mend.
This tough road, the rhyme read
Requires pardon and true pity,
Only then will you be led
From this cold and darkened city.
The boy still knew his worth
So he left the city streets
For his beloved place of birth
Where his rhyming heart still beats.
1. Look at the title of the poem. What is the poem about?
2. What was the message of the poem on the wall?
3. Find a word in stanza 3 that has an opposite meaning to “decay”.
4. The first line of stanza 4 has an example of alliteration. Write down the line and underline the words repeated.
5. Why is the city described as “cold and darkened”? This is an example of a . . . ?
6. Does the poem end on a happy note like all fairy tales – and they lived happy ever after . . . ? How do you know?
Vocabulary
ode – a lyric poem where the narrator is speaking to someone
subway – an underground tunnel for trains
scribbled – written down hurriedly
decay – rotten or ruinous state
pardon – to excuse or to forgive
worth – what a person or thing is worth
The rooks
Jane Euphemia Browne
The rooks are building on the trees;
They build there every spring:
“Caw, caw,” is all they say,
For none of them can sing.
They’re up before the break of day,
And up till late at night;
For they must labour busily
As long as it is light.
And many a crooked stick they bring,
And many a slender twig,
And many a tuft of moss, until
Their nests are round and big.
“Caw, caw.” Oh, what a noise
They make in rainy weather!
Good children always speak by turns,
But rooks all talk together.
Vocabulary
rooks – black birds, belonging to the crow family
labour – work
tuft – bunch
1. At what time of the year do the rooks build their nests?
2. What is the difference between a semi-colon (;) as in line 1 and a colon (:) in line 2?
3. There is an example of onomatopoeia (imitation of sound) in line 3. Write it down.
4. Are the rooks lazy birds? Why?
5. What do they use to build their nests? What do the nests look like?
6.
