Y10-11 Literature Coursework 2015-16

Explore the ways in which the writers present in a group of poems, referring to three in detail and to three more derived from your wider reading.

Remember – Christina Rossetti*

A Mother in a Refugee Camp- Chinua Achebe*

Sonnet 166 – William Shakespeare*

Do not go gentle into that good night- Dylan Thomas

Sonnet 71 - William Shakespeare

Piano – D. H. Lawrence

Advice:

2000 words (+/- 10%) Must analyse in depth the poems with * after them Must make comparisons across all the poems Must talk about themes, form, structure and language

1

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,Gone far away into the silent land;When you can no more hold me by the hand,Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.5 Remember me when no more day by dayYou tell me of our future that you planned:Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.Yet if you should forget me for a while10 And afterwards remember, do not grieve:For if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

2

A Mother in a Refugee CampNo Madonna and Child could touchHer tenderness for a sonShe soon would have to forget. . . .The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,5 Of unwashed children with washed-out ribsAnd dried-up bottoms waddling in labored stepsBehind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers thereHad long ceased to care, but not this one:She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,10 and in her eyes the memoryOf a mother’s pride. . . . She had bathed himAnd rubbed him down with bare palms.She took from their bundle of possessionsA broken comb and combed15 The rust-colored hair left on his skullAnd then—humming in her eyes—began carefully to part it.In their former life this was perhapsA little daily act of no consequenceBefore his breakfast and school; now she did it20 Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.

Chinua Achebe

Please note the American spelling of ‘odors’ ‘diarrhea’ ‘labored’ and ‘colored’.(English spellings: odours, diarrhoea, laboured and coloured.)

3

Sonnet 116 ‘Let me not to the marriage…’

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments; love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove.5 O no, it is an ever-fixèd markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks10 Within his bending sickle's compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare

4

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,5 Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.10 Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,15 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

5

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling

strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she

sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the

15 past.

D.H.Lawrence

(See example annotations for how detailed yours should be)

6

SONNET 71

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if, I say, you look upon this verse

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.

But let your love even with my life decay,

   Lest the wise world should look into your moan

   And mock you with me after I am gone.

William Shakespeare

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Exemplar

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Rules

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Mark Scheme

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