Genre Mix 01 (Middle years)

About Standards

Genre Mix

Lyric poem

Sometimes you're just drifting in a boat or a bus or train and looking at the world, mind wandering. This poem captures that feeling through rhythm, rhyme and imagery.

How does it do that?

  • It uses a steady rhythm of words. That makes it feel slow, comforting and thoughtful – almost dream-like.
  • It rhymes. This helps with rhythm. Also, rhyming words feel nice! Even if you don’t realise it, your brain tries to predict a rhyming word, which feels good.
  • It uses gentle words and phrases like ‘golden’, ‘flows along for ever’, ‘castles of the foam’, ‘a-floating’, and ‘a-boating’. This dreamy imagery helps your mind to drift. 

Take a look.

Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.

Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating-
Where will all come home?

Where Go the Boats?Robert Louis StevensonSource

Hunters in the Snow (Winter)

Grey-blue, the frozen sky,
Sharp white, the fallen snow,
A blanket covers everything,
From trees to ground below.

Families a-skating,
The hunters amble, slow.
Hungry folk, a-waiting,
How did the hunting go?

Your turn

Like what you see?

You’re not logged in!

If you want to save your writing, login and either assign this lesson to yourself or access it via your class.