Lesson Plan and Activity for English Poetry

Lesson plan and activity for English Poetry.

This lesson is intended for advanced literature students. It can be done with High school English classes.

Step 1: Have the students review the poem “The Rhodora” by Ralph Waldo Emerson which is posted on the second page of this document.

Follow up the class reading with the PowerPoint presentation for this lesson.

The Rhodora (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew;

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

from: Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York, Boston, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company: 1899. Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole. Some biographical facts on Emerson: born May 25, 1803, Boston, Mass., U.S. died April 27, 1882, Concord, Mass.

Age when he died: 78

Preacher when he was about 23

Age 26 Married 1st wife Ellen Louisa Tucker

Wife died 2 years later of TB

The following year doubting his faith he stopped preaching at age 27

Age 32 Married his 2nd wife Lydia Jackson

Age 33 he published his first book of poems “Nature”

Rhodora: AKA - Candian Rhododendron. Unlike many members of the Heath family, the Rhodora loses its leaves in autumn, as does the Pinxter. Found mostly in bogs, like this on in Ponemah Bog in Amherst, New Hampshire, they make a spectacular showing in spring as they bloom.

He led the literary explosion of the USA known as the American renaissance (1835–65).