Introduction to Poetry
Senior 2 · English
Introduction to Poetry
Lesson 2 of 5
24 min
Poems are made to be heard. Long before most people could read, poems and songs were remembered because of their rhyme and rhythm, the same reason you still remember songs from primary school. In this lesson you will learn how poets use sound, and you will hear a train rush through a poem.
This is another poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), in the public domain. The speaker is looking out of the window of a fast steam train. Read it aloud, and try to read it faster and faster.
From a Railway Carriage
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
Word help: carriage (a coach of a train); hedge (a line of bushes forming a fence); ditch (a long narrow channel beside a road or field); troops (soldiers); meadow (a field of grass); clamber (climb awkwardly using hands and feet); brambles (thorny bushes that bear blackberries); tramp (a homeless person who walks from place to place); the green (an open grassy area in a village); lumping (moving heavily and clumsily); glimpse (a very quick look).
Why do the sights "fly" past?
They do not move; the train is moving so fast that they seem to fly past the window.
Name three people the speaker sees in stanza 2.
A child picking brambles, a tramp standing and gazing, and a man with his load on a runaway cart.
What does the last line, "Each a glimpse and gone for ever!", tell us?
Each sight is seen for only a moment and will never be seen again, because the train does not stop.
Two words rhyme when their final sounds are the same: witches / ditches, battle / cattle. Rhyme is about sound, not spelling: eye / by and gazes / daisies rhyme although they are spelled differently.
End rhyme is rhyme at the ends of lines. We describe the pattern with letters, called the rhyme scheme.
| Line ends with | Letter |
|---|---|
| witches | A |
| ditches | A |
| battle | B |
| cattle | B |
| plain | C |
| rain | C |
| eye | D |
| by | D |
The first sound gets A; any line that rhymes with it also gets A; the next new sound gets B, and so on. The scheme is AABBCCDD. Two rhyming lines that sit together are called a rhyming couplet, so this whole poem is written in couplets.
Rhythm is the pattern of strong (stressed) and weak (unstressed) syllables, the beat of a line. Clap on the capital letters:
FAS-ter than FAI-ries, FAS-ter than WITCH-es
Most beats here are one strong syllable followed by two weak ones: DUM-da-da, DUM-da-da. This galloping pattern sounds like the wheels of a train racing over the joins in the rails. The sound imitates the meaning, which is why the poem feels fast.
The poem opens with a comparison: Faster than fairies. Revise the three patterns:
| Pattern | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| adjective + -er than | short adjectives | The train is faster than a bus. |
| more + adjective + than | longer adjectives | The train is more comfortable than a moto. |
| as + adjective + as / not as ... as | equal / not equal | The sights fly as thick as rain. A cart is not as fast as a train. |
Worked example. Correct: The bus to Musanze is more faster than the bus to Huye. → faster already means "more fast", so remove more: The bus to Musanze is faster than the bus to Huye.
Notice also the presenting phrases Here is ... / There is ..., which point to things one by one, as a guide does on a tour.
In pairs, one partner claps a steady DUM-da-da while the other reads stanza 1. Then swap for stanza 2. Try reading it slowly: does the poem lose its meaning? (It should. The speed is part of the meaning.)
Write four lines, two rhyming couplets (AABB), about a fast journey: a bus from Kigali to Musanze, a moto ride through town, or a boat on Lake Kivu. Use at least one comparison and one example of alliteration.
Model by Ganzaa
Faster than goats and faster than rain,
Hills rush by like a green-backed train;
Banana leaves wave as we bump and we bend,
And Musanze's volcanoes rise up at the end.
Why this works: AABB rhyme (rain/train, bend/end), a comparison (faster than), a simile (like a green-backed train) and alliteration (bump ... bend).
Tip
Rhyme scheme recipe: give the first line-end sound A; give every line that rhymes with it A; give the next new sound B. Listen to the sound, not the spelling.
Rhythm: clap the strong syllables. Then say how the beat matches the meaning (fast, slow, marching, gentle).
Write the rhyme scheme of stanza 2 (brambles... ever).
Solution: scrambles/brambles A A, gazes/daisies B B, road/load C C, river/ever D D → AABBCCDD. (River/ever is a near rhyme: the endings sound alike but not exactly.)
Find one example of alliteration in stanza 2.
Solution: "glimpse and gone" (also "lumping along with man and load").
Is "Fly as thick as driving rain" a simile or a metaphor? Explain.
Solution: a simile, because it compares using as ... as. The sights pass as thickly and quickly as heavy rain.
Do eye and by rhyme? Why?
Solution: yes. They end with the same sound /aɪ/, even though they are spelled differently.
Complete: A moto is (more quick / quicker) than a bus in traffic.
Solution: quicker. Quick is a short adjective, so add -er.
Remember
Sources and credits
