While browsing through WordPress posts today, I noticed that chyfrin seems to be going through a Shakespeare phase. I am a huge Shakespeare fan and loved teaching his plays and sonnets.
While explaining the structure, metre and content of sonnets to a group of Year 10 students, I wrote the following. They also had a go and produced some excellent examples – one student’s rather cheeky verse was chosen for publication in the magazine of a local college.
I have added these to my page of Old Poems.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
A Shakespeare sonnet should have fourteen lines
And each line should have ten iambic feet.
Some poets like three quatrains of four lines;
The rhyming couplet makes it all complete.
Sometimes rhetorical questions start it off,
Each quatrain building on the main conceit,
With themes of beauty, nature, time and love,
Often about someone the poet thinks is sweet.
But Shakespeare took the sonnet for his own,
He wrote about true feelings and true love,
He finally refused to ‘false belie’
His mistress with the sun or stars above.
And yet the subjects of the poet’s rhyme
Remain a mystery ‘til the end of time.
Sonnet for my Students
My students’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
It is as if they are not yet awake;
They yawn and shuffle in, but never run,
Until it gets to time for morning break.
I have seen some of them arrive on time,
To smile at me and greet me at the door.
It is delightful when they stand in line
And tell me that my lesson’s not a bore!
I love to hear my Year 10 students speak
In pairs, in groups and often on their own.
I grant, I teach them just three times a week,
But help them sometimes when the rest have gone.
Some teachers think my pupils are too loud:
As long as they can speak they do me proud.
writing in north norfolk 