Songs of Ourselves Volume 1, Part 4 – 2025 Exams
Poems
Margaret Atwood, ‘The City Planners’
Boey Kim Cheng, ‘The Planners’
Thom Gunn, ‘The Man with Night Sweats’
Robert Lowell, ‘Night Sweat’
Edward Thomas, ‘Rain’
Anne Stevenson, ‘The Spirit is too Blunt an Instrument’
Tony Harrison, ‘From Long Distance’
W H Auden, ‘Funeral Blues’
Thomas Hardy, ‘He Never Expected Much’
Fleur Adcock, ‘The Telephone Call’
Peter Porter, ‘A Consumer’s Report’
Judith Wright, ‘Request To A Year’
Charles Tennyson Turner, ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book’
Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’
Stevie Smith, ‘Away, Melancholy’
01
CITY PLANNERS By Margaret Atwood
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swathe in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things;
the smell of spilt oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
02
THE PLANNERS By Boem Kim Cheng
They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang
in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back
and the skies surrender.
They erase the flaws,
the blemishes of the past, knock off
useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged
with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows
of shining teeth.
Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.
They have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again.
The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through
the fossils of last century.
But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop
to stain the blueprint
of our past’s tomorrow.
03
A MAN WITH NIGHT SWEATS By Thom Gunn
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.
My flesh was its own shield:
Where it was gashed, it healed.
I grew as I explored
The body I could never trust
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust.
A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.
I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked
My mind reduced to hurry,
My flesh reduced and wrecked.
I have to change the bed,
But catch myself instead.
Stopped upright where I am
Hugging my body to me
As if to shield it from
The pains that will go through me.
As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.
04
NIGHT SWEATS By Robert Lowell
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom –
but I am living in a tidied room,
for ten nights now I’ve felt the creeping damp
float over my pyjamas’ wilted white…
Sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet,
everything streams and tells me this is right;
my life’s fever is soaking in night sweat –
one life, one writing! But the downward glide
and bias of existing wrings us dry –
always inside me is the child who died,
always inside me is his will to die –
one universe, one body… in this urn
the animal night sweats of the spirit burn.
Behind me! You! Again I feel the light
lighten my leaded eyelids, while the gray
skulled horses whinny for the soot of night.
I dabble in the dapple of the day,
a heap of wet clothes, seamy, shivering,
I see my flesh and bedding washed with light
my child exploding into dynamite,
my wife… your lightness alters everything,
and tears the black web from the spider’s sack,
as your heart hops and flutters like a hare.
Poor turtle, tortoise, if I cannot clear
the surface of these troubled waters here,
absolve me, help me, Dear Heart, as you bear
this world’s dead weight and cycle on your back.
05
RAIN
by Edward Thomas
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
06
The Spirit Is Too Blunt an Instrument
The spirit is too blunt an instrument
to have made this baby.
Nothing so unskilful as human passions
could have managed the intricate
exacting particulars: the tiny
blind bones with their manipulating tendons,
the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient
fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae,
the chain of the difficult spine.
Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent
fingernails, the shell-like complexity
of the ear, with its firm involutions
concentric in miniature to minute
ossicles. Imagine the
infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections
of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments
through which the completed body
already answers to the brain.
Then name any passion or sentiment
possessed of the simplest accuracy.
No, no desire or affection could have done
with practice what habit
has done perfectly, indifferently,
through the body's ignorant precision.
It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent
love and despair and anxiety
and their pain.
Shows hes impatient with The ABAB rhyme scheming are alternating to show
how long his father is taking how the feelings of love and grief are struggling with
to accept reality him in his life
07 Sentence lacks emotion its
blunt showing that he has
Meredithian sonnet
Uses Traditional Iambic Pentameter
accepted his reality
From Long Distance About a gap in communication with the
dead and the living then the son and
Enjambement which therefore Makes dad and dead in a strong
Alliteration alliteration which emphasizes the death.
Contrast to reality the father
First line puts
line in context
A Though my mother was already two years dead Death Imagery
hard sound k Present participle The use of gas instead of fire shows how gentle the love is
B Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, Routine duties he did when she was stiil alive gives the duties of a husband
Repition Shows that is a caring,lovingand kind man
Shows that they Comfort
shared an A put hot water bottles her side of the bed Slant alliteration of 'B' are bringing up the emotions of grief and
intimate struggle that he is trying to hide so its like a sense of denial
realtionship
B and still went to renew her transport pass. Plosive sounds are emphasizing on the pretense and the pain that
he is going through
Direct address Building up on thedistance between the two
Sense of formality showing that his relationship
Modal verb with his father had grown cold
Guttural sound C
and d shows the A
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone. O sound brings in a sense of Melancholy
Caesura creates tension Emphasizing distance
son was fighting
to help his father
accept reality B He’d put you off an hour to give him time Trying to protect others from the pain that he is feeling
and while he was Liquid consonance
doing this The continuing ABAB rhyme scheme shows that this is a contiuning
everyone was
A to clear away her things and look alone Sense of shame battle he has been having for 2 years between these feelings
fighting pain and pretense and
Simile isolation
B
as though his still raw love was such a crime. Expecting men to be stoic and not to show to emotion when going through a lot
His realism was a disease
Metaphor Shows the sons sense of realism was too much for him beacuse he was not
ready to accept that she was gone he wanted to keep his faith and hope
Consonance of b sounds is emphasizing the
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief feelings he is fighting the pain and struggle
Brings in a senses Modal verb SYmbolism of hope that she would come back
of longing and
certainty
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
The word rusted shows the decline of the love they shared
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief. The lock shows how he is imprisoned in his state of denial and grief
This is ironic because the way he would be freed is when he dies
Wishing she'll come back soon
Denial He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.
volta when shifting to th present
The caesura and the end of the line emphasizing the finality
Sense of Inevitability of death
realism, finality I believe life ends with death, and that is all. Present tense
and mortality
Apostrophe
because he is You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
talking about his Sense of grief He is somewhat doing the same things as his father
dead parents
which showing his in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
grief but is more
accepting of where
Sense of denial but not as strong as his father
they are so the
grief is not as
and the disconnected number I still call. This is a bit contradictory to how he was bashing his father in the begginning
intense as his
father Themes:Denial,struggle,endurance of love,Grief,Isolation,
Forced meter to show the grief his father was fighting and how he was going to pass it on to him
4 quatrains
08
FUNERAL BLUES
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows around the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week, and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can come to any good.
09
HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
Since as a child I used to lie
Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
Never, I own, expected I
That life would be all fair.
‘Twas then you said, and since have said,
Times since have said,
In that mysterious voice you shed
From clouds and hills around:
‘Many have loved me desperately,
Many with smooth serenity,
While some have shown contempt of me
Till they dropped underground.
‘I do not presume overmuch,
Child; overmuch;
Just neutral-tinted haps and such,’
You said to minds like mine.
Wise warning for your credit’s sake!
Which I for one failed not to take,
And hence could stem such strain and ache
As each year might assign.
10
THE TELEPHONE CALL
They asked me, ‘Are you sitting down?
Right? This is Universal Lotteries’,
they said. ‘You’ve won the top prize,
the Ultra-super Global Special.
What would you do with a million pounds?
Or, actually, with more than a million –
not that it makes a lot of difference
once you’re a millionaire.’ And they laughed.
‘Are you OK?’ they asked – ‘Still there?
Come on, now, tell us, how does it feel?’
I said, ‘I just… can’t believe it!’
They said, ‘That’s what they all say.
What else? Go on, tell us about it.’
I said, ‘I feel the top of my head
has floated off, out through the window,
revolving like a flying saucer.’
‘That’s unusual’ they said. ‘Go on.’
I said ‘I’m finding it hard to talk.
My throat’s gone dry, my nose is tingling.
I think I’m going to sneeze – or cry.
‘That’s right’ they said, ‘don’t be ashamed
of giving way to your emotions.
It isn’t every day you hear
you’re going to get a million pounds.
Relax, now, have a little cry,
We’ll give you a moment…’ ‘Hang on!’ I said.
I haven’t bought a lottery ticket
for years and years. And what did you say
the company’s called?’ They laughed again.
‘Not to worry about a ticket.
We’re Universal. We operate
A retrospective Chances Module.
Nearly everyone’s bought a ticket
in some lottery or another,
once at least. We buy up the files,
feed the names into our computer,
and see who the lucky person is.’
‘Well, that’s incredible’ I said.
‘It’s marvellous. I still can’t quite…
I’ll believe it when I see the cheque.’
‘Oh,’ they said, ‘there’s no cheque.’
‘But the money?’ ‘We don’t deal in money.
Experiences are what we deal in.
You’ve had a great experience, right?
Exciting? Something you’ll remember?
That’s your prize. So congratulations
from all of us at Universal.
Have a nice day!’ And the line went dead.
11
THE CONSUMER’S REPORT
The name of the product I tested is Life,
I have completed the form you sent me
and understand my answers are confidential.
I had it as a gift,
I didn’t feel much while using it,
in fact I think I’d like to have been more excited.
It seemed gentle on the hands
but left an embarrassing deposit behind.
It was not economical
and I have used much more than I thought
(I suppose I have about half left
but it’s difficult to tell) –
although the instructions are fairly large
there are so many of them
I don’t know which to follow, especially
as they seem to contradict each other.
I’m not sure such a thing
should be put in the way of children –
It’s difficult to think of a purpose
Also the price is much too high.
Things are piling up so fast,
after all, the world got by
for a thousand million years
without this, do we need it now?
(Incidentally, please ask your man
to stop calling me ‘the respondent’,
I don’t like the sound of it.)
There seems to be a lot of different labels,
sizes and colours should be uniform
the shape is awkward, it’s waterproof
but not heat resistant, it doesn’t keep
yet it’s very difficult to get rid of:
whenever they make it cheaper they seem
to put less in – if you say you don’t
want it, then it’s delivered anyway.
I’d agree it’s a popular product,
it’s got into the language; people
even say they’re on the side of it.
Personally I think its overdone,
a small thing people are ready
to behave badly about. I think
we should take it for granted. If it’s
experts are called philosophers or
market researchers or historians, we shouldn’t
care. We are the consumers and the last
law makers. So finally, I’d buy it.
But the question of a ‘best buy’
I’d like to leave until I get
the competitive product you said you’d send.
12
A REQUEST TO A YEAR
If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great-great-grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts.
Who, having had eight children
And little opportunity for painting pictures,
Sat one day on a high rock
Beside a river in Switzerland
And from a difficult distance viewed
Her second son, balanced on a small ice-floe,
Drift down the current towards a waterfall
That struck rock bottom eighty feet below,
While her second daughter, impeded,
No doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
Stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily caught him on his way).
Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist’s isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.
Year, if you have no Mother’s Day present planned;
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.
13
On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book
But thou has left thine own fair monument,
Thy wings gleam out and tell me what thou wert:
Oh! that the memories, that survive us here,
Were half as lovely as these wings of thine.
Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine
Now thou art gone: Our doom is ever near:
The peril is beside us day by day;
The book will close upon us, it may be,
Just as we lift ourselves to soar away
Upon the summer airs. But, unlike thee,
The closing book may stop our vital breath,
Yet leave no lustre on our page of death.
14
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Internal Monolgue
15
AWAY MELANCHOLY
Caesura
Pushing Personifying Melancholy
away Away, melancholy,
sadness Stating it like its a choice Imperative mood
Away with it, let it go. Conscious effort
Sense of pleading
Turns to nature to find solution which builds momentum
Green and Symbolises life and renewal
green is a Are not the trees green, Why should he be sad when everything is full of life Liquid consonance
diacope
Air, fire and
The earth as green?
water these
Movement of natural things show that they are full of energy which he does not have
are natural
elements
Does not the wind blow, Motivators to him
which are full Turned to nature for motivation
of energy and Highlights constant flow of nature despite presence of sadness
do not Fire leap and the river flow?
succumb to
Melancholy
Away melancholy. This phrase has become a Mantra or a refrain something he is repeating to bring it to life
Anthropomorphism - figure of speech in which you attribute human characters to animals or objects
Busy brings a sense of purpose
The ant is busy
Personification
Carrieth is
a Religious
allusion
He carrieth his meat, Though ants are small they are wise the have drive which acts as a motivator to him
referring to enjambment
a proverb All things hurry Coming back to melancholy after the image of being eaten but still after knowing this his pushing it away
The Caesura is
helping with the To be eaten or eat. Reference to circle of life
way his pushing
away the
melancholy this
time with more
Away, melancholy.
force more of a
plea
Asyndeton-
Man,too,hurries,eats,couples,burries
this comparing man to life and animals
Man, too, hurries, which brings in a sense of mortatlity
Internal rhyme
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy, He's struggling more now to push away the Melancholy cause
the reasons are getting less and less so he now has to make a
decision to let it go
Away with it, let it go.
Volta
Tries to
Man of all creatures comes back with more energy to fight and push
fight back
from defeat
Comes in feeling Powerful
Is superlativeMan is superior to creatures and animals
The use of brackets shows that the feelings are now suppressed because he has his energy back
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Man is innovative making stone age tools and making idols leading up to the religious allusion to moses how he wrote ten
Religious allusion Raiseth a stone commandments on stone which was a strong basis on all belief
Still suppressed speaker no longer struggling to push it away
(Away melancholy)
Something solid and sacred
Imagery of the
creation
Into the stone, the god Reference to man, man is a creature as he is created in God's image therefore man is a creator too
Pours what he knows of good
Idea of transformation of stone by man into something to worship, man is able to attribute goodness to
Personificati stone
on of stone Calling, good, God. Stone is a kind of a deity
The stone has been been made into an abstract idea
Away, melancholy, let it go. Capitalisation shows that this is the real untangible God
This is more casual beacuse of his new
found faith in man
Imperative mood due the the imperative verb speak
Speak not to me of tears, Sense of sorrow
Evil disease suffering
asyndenton
shows that the Tyranny, pox, wars, These are his thoughts psyche and the devils advocate speaking to him
evils of the
world are Counter argument to previous stanza
overwhelming Saying, Can God, With Imperative mood his not willing to be defeated even if anything is failing
but his strength Even if man or God is failing
is able to push
them away Stone of man’s thought, be good? This Whole stanza is a Rhetorical question that is Questioning all the things giving him hope
The disappearance of the Mantra shows that his is no longer feeling it because he is willing to fight
Brings More Religious allusion To show that faith in God is enough and covers all
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Alliteration
Stone of man’s good, growing, The word is a religious allusion of Christianity that shows that the process of becoming good takes time
By man’s called God,
Its back in a good way but in a manageable way that doesn't need to much force but he needs to be
Away, melancholy, let it go. more intention and conscious with it
Chiasmus Man aspires
When words
are repeated
in a reverse To good,
order in this
stanza
This
To love
emphasises the
main purposes
of man in life
Sighs;
Tricolon has
words that
Beaten, corrupted, dying
have dictions
of Violence
and suffering In his own blood lying Visual Imagery of crucifixion of Jesus which connects to the previous stanza
Call of love
Yet heaves up an eye above
even when in
Epizeuxis
pain
Unbreakable Cries, Love, love.
commitment to
love when dying Judge man based on his weaknesses
for his people It is his virtue needs explaining, but based on his good side
Rhyme
Not his failing.
Away, melancholy, Sense of finality that he is letting it go
The fact that it ends in the Mantra shows that the battle is not yet over there is still the cycle of struggle as the mantra is
Away with it, let it go. .at the end the struggle continues and he now has more energy to fight it ,
Theme: Mortatlity, Despair vs hope, Humanity vs nature, Faith in religion,
Structure: Internal Monologue
9 stanzas
Free verse
no base meter
no set rhyme scheme
Mantra Like its a song
