Hunger by Laurence Binyon
I come among the peoples like a shadow.
I sit down by each man's side.
None sees me, but they look on one another,
And know that I am there.
My silence is like the silence of the tide
That buries the playground of children;
Like the deepening of frost in the slow night,
When birds are dead in the morning.
Armies trample, invade, destroy,
With guns roaring from earth and air.
I am more terrible than armies,
I am more feared than the cannon.
Kings and chancellors give commands;
I give no command to any;
But I am listened to more than kings
And more than passionate orators.
I unswear words, and undo deeds.
Naked things know me.
I am first and last to be felt of the living.
I am Hunger
Inspired by this, I thought about which other emotions or feelings could be personified in the way that hunger is in Binyon's poem. Here is my poem:
I sit down by each man's side.
None sees me, but they look on one another,
And know that I am there.
My silence is like the silence of the tide
That buries the playground of children;
Like the deepening of frost in the slow night,
When birds are dead in the morning.
Armies trample, invade, destroy,
With guns roaring from earth and air.
I am more terrible than armies,
I am more feared than the cannon.
Kings and chancellors give commands;
I give no command to any;
But I am listened to more than kings
And more than passionate orators.
I unswear words, and undo deeds.
Naked things know me.
I am first and last to be felt of the living.
I am Hunger
Inspired by this, I thought about which other emotions or feelings could be personified in the way that hunger is in Binyon's poem. Here is my poem:
Laughter
I sneak
into the
cracks
Of the
concrete between people.
I cause
rain to retreat
s
d
r
a
w
p
u
And clouds
to get sucked in by the sun.
Babies
know me before they learn
their
first words. My light says more
than
all the letters in the dictionary.
I am
the glue that fixes and binds.
I am
the wind the carries life in its arms.
I am
the monkey writing a poem.
I am
laughter.
With the above two poems in mind, have a go at writing a poem in which the emotion is talking. Possible emotions/feelings might be: anger, loneliness, joy, embarrassment or tiredness. Possible sentence starters include:
- I live among...
- I am more....than....
- I am less....than.....
- I am...
- I cause....
- I wish.....
