Poem Building—the basics Name:__________________

Traditional rhythm and rhyme

Directions: Please do your best and have fun with the following:

Craft a couplet with an iambic tetrameter rhythm pattern that has a rhyme scheme of A, B.

Next, turn your couplet into a quatrain by adding two more lines of iambic tetrameter that also have the rhyme scheme of A, B.

When creating the third and fourth lines (the second couplet), try to make the meaning of these two new lines fit the meaning of the beginning couplet.

Poetic Foot Identification

Using your handout (pp. 16-17), identify the following poetic feet. Your choices are iamb, trochee, anapest, or dactyl.

Interest ______________ Nightly_______________

Relief________________ Wedding______________

Buzzard______________ Cashier_______________

Taco John’s __________ Display_______________

Superman____________ Guitar________________

Finally, please turn to p. 18 of our handout and determine the rhyme scheme of William Butler Yeats’ poem When You Are Old.

Please write the poem’s rhyme scheme in the blanks below:

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

What is the rhythm pattern of line 2 of the poem? In other words what poetic foot is used to create line 2 and how many of these feet are there?

Type of poetic foot: _________________ Number of poetic feet:___________________

When You are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,	5
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled	10
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

That Time of Year

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon these boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie

As the deathbed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

--William Shakespeare