# Teaching > Lesson Plans >  descriptive poem for drawing

## Il Penseroso

I'm currently planning a lesson to do with 4th-6th graders as part of a practicum in my Education program at university. I was hoping to select a poem that is very descritive to read to the kids as they draw what they see through the words. My initial idea was to use Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn," but I've since decided that this will probably be too difficult a poem for 4th-6th graders (based on experience I've had with 'em).

I'm looking for something that won't be _too_ easy, preferably something with metaphors so that I may seque to brief instruction on those. I want to make the activity somewhat challenging, and one of my ideas is to mandate that I will only read the poem perhaps three times and they must come to agreement on when those three repetitions can be used.

Any recommendations?

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## Il Penseroso

...perhaps Frost's "After Apple-Picking"

I'd still like more options though, please?

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## dramasnot6

Oh, Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney is beautiful.

Blackberry-picking


Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

Seamus Heaney

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## dramasnot6

DEATH OF A NATURALIST

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.





© 1987 Seamus Heaney

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## kelby_lake

I hate that poem!

Why not do The Tyger?

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## Il Penseroso

drama,
thanks for the suggestiosn (I hadn't read either of those). I already did the lesson and went with the Frost poem. You can see my blog for some details.

kelby,
Which poem?

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## kelby_lake

i don't think heaney's a good poet

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