What differences do you see between stanzas 1-2 and stanzas 3-4?
What reason would a bank have for not wanting to adopt the online-transfer delay policy?
August 5, 2017Write a comprehensive report on the Federal Reserve System: Origin, Structure, History, Mission and Success (positive/negative?)…..and it’s impact on the current economic situation.
August 5, 2017Adlestrop
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
- The poem has four stanzas, called quatrains (made up of four lines). Work out the rhyme scheme and then the line lengths by syllable count.
- What differences do you see between stanzas 1-2 and stanzas 3-4?
- We don’t usually stop to think much about a word like “and.” But count the uses of “and” in stanzas 1-2 and in stanzas 3-4. How would you explain that difference in frequency of “and” between the two halves of the poem?
- What is listed in stanzas 3-4? How does listing change our sense of the lines?
- Contrast the platform scene with the scene of the surrounding natural world.
- Why change from what can be seen (stanza 3) to what can be heard (stanza 4)? Note that hearing is involved in stanza 2: “hissed”; “cleared his throat.”
- The poem concerns names. How do we weigh the name “Adelstrop” against the names “Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire”? [“Gloucestershire” is pronounced as Glos-ter-sher.]
- What role is played by remembering?
- Why is the poem “Adelstrop” and not “All the Birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire”?
