Descriptive Poetry: adjectives and adverbs, simile and metaphor

Your task is to write a poem of over one-hundred words (less than 150) that describes somewhere you have been in the last week, outside.  It should include adjectives and adverbs, simile and metaphor in order to better describe the place, the weather, et cetera.  Try describe with all five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.

You will print it, post it, and present it as before, but try to memorize!  Due Friday, 2/21.


Find the adjectives and adverbs.

The Shark

He seemed to know the harbour,
So leisurely he swam;
His fin,
Like a piece of sheet-iron,
Three-cornered,
And with knife-edge,
Stirred not a bubble
As it moved
With its base-line on the water.

His body was tubular
And tapered
And smoke-blue,
And as he passed the wharf
He turned,
And snapped at a flat-fish
That was dead and floating.
And I saw the flash of a white throat,
And a double row of white teeth,
And eyes of metallic grey,
Hard and narrow and slit.

Then out of the harbour,
With that three-cornered fin
Shearing without a bubble the water
Lithely,
Leisurely,
He swam—
That strange fish,
Tubular, tapered, smoke-blue,
Part vulture, part wolf,
Part neither—for his blood was cold.

Simile and metaphor:

The Sea

The sea is a hungry dog,
Giant and grey.
He rolls on the beach all day.
With his clashing teeth and shaggy jaws
Hour upon hour he gnaws
The rumbling, tumbling stones,
And 'Bones, bones, bones, bones! '
The giant sea-dog moans,
Licking his greasy paws.

And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy cloud,
He bounds to his feet and snuffs and sniffs,
Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs,
And howls and hollos long and loud.

But on quiet days in May or June,
When even the grasses on the dune
Play no more their reedy tune,
With his head between his paws
He lies on the sandy shores,
So quiet, so quiet, he scarcely snores. 

James Reeves

 O my Luve's like a red, red rose,  

That's newly sprung in June: 
O my Luve's like the melodie, 
That's sweetly play'd in tune.  

As fair art thou, my bonie lass, 
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear, 
Till a' the seas gang dry.  

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, 
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
 And I will luve thee still, my dear, 
While the sands o' life shall run. And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
 And fare-thee-weel, a while! 
And I will come again, my Luve, 
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!
- Robert Burns

Sonnet 18, Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,   

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,   

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.