Page 169 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit
P. 169
“The Children’s Hour”
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, pages 51-52
Vocabulary
banditti – plural of “bandit,” thieves
moulder – decay; crumble to dust
1. Describe the speaker of this poem. What is the speaker’s gender? What do you think the
speaker’s relation is to Alice, Allegra, and Edith?
2. Find and record an example of half rhyme in the first stanza.
3. The speaker makes a reference to the “Bishop of Bingen,” a figure from outside the poem
whom the speaker assumes readers will recognize. What is the literary term for this kind of
reference?
4. Rather than saying, “Such an old person as I am,” the speaker says, “Such an old
moustache as I am.” In using a part (moustache) to stand for a whole (person), what literary
device is Longfellow employing?
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