The Road at My Door - by W B Yeats

 

An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffan[M1]  man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.

1.     What are the four modifiers the poet uses to describe the person who stopped at his door?

2.     What did the man speak about?

3.     How did the man feel about what he was talking about? 

A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear tree broken by the storm.

1.     Who were the second group of people that stopped at the poetic persona’s cottage?

2.     Why do you think the poetic persona complained about his mundane problems to them?

3.     Which word used by the poetic persona signals how he felt about what he was doing? 

I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream,
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.

1.     What did the poetic persona do to repress his envy?

2.     Do you think he was successful at it?

3.     Explain the phrase “cold snows of a dream” in your own words.

4.     What is the rhyming scheme of the poem?

5.     What are the techniques used by the poet?

6.     What is the main theme of this poem?

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 [M1]Literary allusion a character in one of Shakespearean dramas called Falstaff (Henry V)