The Way Through the Woods
Rudyard Kipling
An English scene presents a view of woods quite different from the view in the proceeding poem.(Daffodils)

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods . . . .
But there is no road through the woods.

1. What happened to the road that used to pass through the woods? Are the sounds heard in the woods on a summer evening really the sounds of horses cantering and a shirt swishing? Explain.
2. The poem is in two stanzas. What sights are contained in the first stanza? Why has the poet begun a new stanza at line 13?
3. Only the keeper (line 9) sees where the road once ran. Who do you suppose the keeper is? (Compare your answer with line 9 of Psalm 121 on p 489)
4. Sometimes poets will rhyme two words in the same line:
Weather and rain have undone it agan (line 3)
It is underneath the coppice and heath (line 7)
What other examples of rhyme within lines do you find in poem?

The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2000.
The Psalms
121
The LORD Is Thy Keeper
A Song of degrees.


I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the LORD,
which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:
he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel
shall neither slumber nor sleep.


The LORD is thy keeper:
the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil:
he shall preserve thy soul.
The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in
from this time forth, and even for evermore.


"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud


That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine


And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they


Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie


In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

_______________________________

1.Describe the scene that the poet came upon unexpectedly. What were his feelings just before he encountered the scene? How did the scene affect him? In what way did it go on affecting him in his future?
2.Similies, state comparisons explicitely, by using the preposition like. They may also use the conjunction as. Here, for example, the daffodils resemble stars (lines 7-8). What similarities does the poet find between stars and daffodils? Notice that the comparison is made not by like but by as. You will find that similies often make use of that conjuction. In the first line of the poem occurs another simile using as. What is being compared to what?
3." The Daffodils" may be thought of as telling a little story. Is it a ballad (handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, and repetition made them easier to remember), explain.