1a. Who is speaking in this poem?
2a. What do the passengers ask the conductor?
3a. What does the grass state and implore? What does the grass want to do?
4a. The speaker of this poem does not think that soldiers and battles will be remembered forever. Do you agree with the attitude toward soldiers and battles the speaker expresses?
1b. What work does the grass do?
2b. What change occurs on the battlefields, over time, as a result of the work of the grass?
3b. Explain why Sandburg personifies the grass.
4b. Compare and contrast Walt Whitman's view of the grass in lines 30–50 of "Song of Myself" with Carl Sandburg's view in "Grass." Make a Venn diagram like the one below to show which views the poets share and which they do not. Then explain what the Venn diagram shows.
Personification. What is personified in this poem?
Parallelism. What examples of parallelism can you find in this poem?
1. Imagine that you are the grass. Write a monument inscription about what you have seen at Gettysburg for the tourists that visit the battlefield.
2. Imagine that you are a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg. Write a letter to the national parks board arguing why the battlefield should not be covered with grass.
3. Free verse is poetry that avoids use of regular rhyme, meter, or division into stanzas. Write a free verse poem expressing your feelings about war for a classmate to read.
Achieving Parallelism. Rewrite the following sentences using parallel structure.
1. At Austerlitz, Napoleon won his most brilliant victory and had defeated the Russian and Austrian armies.
2. The Waterloo campaign was marked by confusion and miscalculating on all sides.
3. Both commanding generals of the Battle of Gettysburg have been criticized for their conduct—Lee for his authorization of Pickett's charge; Meade failed to organize his forces for a counterattack.
4. During the third battle of Ypres, the British advanced only five miles and were losing 300,000 men.
5. The battle of Verdun was one of the longest and bloodier engagements of World War I.
Script. Research the Battle of Waterloo, using the Research Log below to record your findings. Then write a script that could be used to give tours of the battlefield.
Script:
Notes on the Battle of Waterloo:
Sources Used:
