Power and Conflict

Sonnet with an irregular rhyme scheme, mirroring the decay of the traveller's tale it describes.

Written in 1818, inspired by a fallen statue of Ramesses II — part of a wave of Romantic-era scepticism about tyrannical power and empire.

A traveller describes a ruined statue in the desert, its inscription boasting of a once-mighty king, now surrounded only by 'the lone and level sands'.

Regular ABAB quatrains and insistent rhythm, creating a relentless, oppressive tone that mirrors the suffering described.

Written in 1794, part of Blake's Songs of Experience — a direct social critique of poverty, child labour and institutional power in Georgian London.

A speaker walks through London and catalogues suffering caused by those in power — from crying children to soldiers and the 'youthful Harlot'.

Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), giving the extract a natural, reflective, spoken quality.

From Wordsworth's long autobiographical poem (published 1850); this extract recalls a childhood encounter that shaped his sense of nature's power.

A boy steals a boat at night and rows out onto a lake; a huge peak appears to 'rear up' and pursue him, leaving him shaken and changed.

Dramatic monologue in rhyming couplets, the smooth rhyme unsettlingly at odds with the Duke's chilling content.

Written in 1842, loosely based on a real Renaissance Duke of Ferrara believed to have had his young wife killed for behaving too freely.

The Duke shows a visitor a portrait of his late wife, revealing through his own words his controlling jealousy and implied role in her death.

Galloping dactylic rhythm mimics charging horses; refrains ('Rode the six hundred') give it the feel of a chant or ballad.

Written in 1854 in response to a real, disastrous cavalry charge in the Crimean War, caused by a miscommunicated order.

Six hundred soldiers ride into near-certain death after a flawed command, and the poem honours their courage and obedience despite the blunder.

Half-rhyme throughout creates a deliberately unresolved, uncomfortable sound, reflecting the soldiers' unresolved suffering.

Written from Owen's own First World War experience; unusually, the enemy in this poem is the freezing weather, not the opposing army.

Soldiers endure a bitter winter night in the trenches, more afraid of the cold and boredom than of combat, and begin to question why they are there.

Blank verse, conversational tone that shifts into sudden fear as the storm arrives, mirroring the speaker's false sense of security.

Written in 1966; often read as an allegory for the Troubles in Northern Ireland as much as a literal storm, though it works as both.

Islanders believe they are prepared for a storm, but as it hits they realise how powerless they are against it.

Starts mid-action with no context (in medias res) and uses irregular free verse to convey chaos and disorientation.

Written in the 1950s, drawing on accounts of the First World War rather than Hughes's own direct experience.

A soldier charges across No Man's Land, his patriotic ideals collapsing into pure physical instinct and fear as he runs.

Colloquial, conversational free verse (dramatic monologue), giving the sense of a soldier speaking informally, almost as if being interviewed.

Based on a real British soldier's account of the Iraq War, exploring the psychological aftermath rather than the battle itself.

A soldier recalls shooting a looter and, back home, cannot escape the memory, which resurfaces uncontrollably.

Free verse with enjambment throughout, mirroring the mother's unstructured, overflowing emotion as she tries to let her son go.

Commissioned in 2009 in response to conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; told from a mother's perspective rather than a soldier's.

A mother recalls sending her son off — possibly to war, possibly just growing up and leaving home — through the physical rituals of preparing him.

Four regular rhyming stanzas — the ordered structure contrasts with the chaos of the images the photographer develops.

Written in 1985, inspired by real photojournalists who capture conflict abroad and then return to indifferent life at home.

A photographer develops war photographs alone in his darkroom, contrasting the horror he has witnessed with the detachment of readers back home.

Short, irregular stanzas with lots of white space on the page, visually mirroring the poem's central idea of paper's fragility.

Uses paper as an extended metaphor for how fragile human structures of power — maps, borders, buildings — really are compared to human life.

The poem considers different kinds of paper (maps, religious texts, architects' plans) and suggests power built on paper is ultimately fragile and temporary.

Three stanzas of unrhymed, flowing lines, giving the poem a dreamlike, memory-driven quality.

Written from the perspective of someone who left their home country as a child, now living in exile, with the city left deliberately unnamed.

The speaker holds onto an idealised childhood memory of her home city, even though it is now, she implies, oppressed or at war.

Mixes Caribbean dialect with standard English, and alternates historical figures with a personal refrain — form itself resists a single 'correct' voice.

Critiques a British education system Agard felt erased Black and Caribbean historical figures in favour of a narrower national history.

The speaker lists Black historical figures excluded from his education and asserts his right to construct his own sense of history and identity.

Regular stanzas but no rhyme scheme, giving a controlled, narrative tone suited to the poem's story-like structure.

Explores a Japanese kamikaze pilot who turns back from his mission in the Second World War, and the shame this brings on his family afterwards.

Told from a daughter's perspective, the poem describes her father's decision to turn back from a suicide mission, and the silence and shame that followed for the rest of his life.