Page 72 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit

“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?

The speaker is male (“an old moustache as I am”).

Answers to the second question may vary. Example: The speaker is most likely a father or
grandfather to the girls.

2. Find and record an example of half rhyme in the first stanza.

“Lower” and “hour” make up the 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?

Such a reference is called an allusion.

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?

Longfellow is employing synecdoche.

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