Section 1 studied "The Charge of the Light Brigade" today. We examined how the form and sound helped convey the theme. Then I gave them time to work on their poems. Section has some slightly different writing options than sections 3 and 4.
Sections 3 and 4 studied "The Ballad of William Sycamore." I have a worksheet with lots of questions to analyze the poem. These two sections will be writing ballads. The ballad must have over 200 syllables. Over the next week, we will be studying examples and how to get started. Today we started with diving their lives into eight stanzas. If you look at the poem below, you will see how his life is laid out in 19 stanzas. We will finish studying the ballad tomorrow.
This ballad has similes, a metaphor, onomatopoeia, alliteration, personification, and color imagery. The syllable count is consistent, and there is a regular rhyme scheme. It is a great example for the students to imitate!
THE BALLAD OF WILLIAM SYCAMORE
by: Stephen Vincent Benét
Y FATHER,
he was a mountaineer,
- His fist was a knotty hammer;
- He was quick on his feet as a running deer,
- And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.
- My mother, she was merry and brave,
- And so she came to her labor,
- With a tall green fir for her doctor grave
- And a stream for her comforting neighbor.
- And some are wrapped in the linen fine,
- And some like a godling's scion;
- But I was cradled on twigs of pine
- In the skin of a mountain lion.
- And some remember a white, starched lap
- And a ewer with silver handles;
- But I remember a coonskin cap
- And the smell of bayberry candles.
- The cabin logs, with the bark still rough,
- And my mother who laughed at trifles,
- And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff,
- With their long, straight squirrel-rifles.
- I can hear them dance, like a foggy song,
- Through the deepest one of my slumbers,
- The fiddle squeaking the boots along
- And my father calling the numbers.
- The quick feet shaking the puncheon-floor,
- And the fiddle squealing and squealing,
- Till the dried herbs rattled above the door
- And the dust went up to the ceiling.
- There are children lucky from dawn till dusk,
- But never a child so lucky!
- For I cut my teeth on "Money Musk"
- In the Bloody Ground of Kentucky!
- When I grew as tall as the Indian corn,
- My father had little to lend me,
- But he gave me his great, old powder-horn
- And his woodsman's skill to befriend me.
- With a leather shirt to cover my back,
- And a redskin nose to unravel
- Each forest sign, I carried my pack
- As far as a scout could travel.
- Till I lost my boyhood and found my wife,
- A girl like a Salem clipper!
- A woman straight as a hunting-knife
- With eyes as bright as the Dipper!
- We cleared our camp where the buffalo feed,
- Unheard-of streams were our flagons;
- And I sowed my sons like the apple-seed
- On the trail of the Western wagons.
- They were right, tight boys, never sulky or slow,
- A fruitful, a goodly muster.
- The eldest died at the Alamo.
- The youngest fell with Custer.
- The letter that told it burned my hand.
- Yet we smiled and said, "So be it!"
- But I could not live when they fenced the land,
- For it broke my heart to see it.
- I saddled a red, unbroken colt
- And rode him into the day there;
- And he threw me down like a thunderbolt
- And rolled on my as I lay there.
- The hunter's whistle hummed in my ear
- As the city-men tried to move me,
- And I died in my boots like a pioneer
- With the whole wide sky above me.
- Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,
- Like the seed of the prairie-thistle;
- It has washed my bones with honey and oil
- And picked them clean as a whistle.
- And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring,
- And my sons, like the wild-geese flying;
- And I lie and hear the meadow-lark sing
- And have much content in my dying.
- Go play with the towns you have built of blocks,
- The towns where you would have bound me!
- I sleep in my earth like a tired fox,
- And my buffalo have found me.
