Class 8 English Chapter 2: A Concrete Example

A neighbour, introduced by address

The poem opens with a person rather than a place: my next-door neighbour, Mrs Jones. We never learn her first name, what she does, or how old she is. We are told where she lives in relation to the speaker, and that is all. That choice matters. The whole poem is one person looking over a fence at another person’s hobby, and the opening line sets up exactly that distance.

A garden full of stones

The first thing we hear about the garden is what it is made of. It is full of stones. Then the list arrives: a crazy path, a lily pond, a rockery, and just beyond them a sundial. Four features, and three of them are hard. If you have ever seen a rock garden, you know this is a real style and not a mistake. The speaker, though, treats the stones as the problem.

That strange device

The sundial comes with a phrase worth slowing down for: a strange device, which Mrs Jones thinks rather nice. Two opinions sit in one sentence. The speaker finds the thing strange. Mrs Jones finds it nice. Neither of them is given more authority than the other, and the poem is happy to leave them disagreeing.

Plants in the gaps

The second stanza turns to what grows. Mrs Jones puts little plants between the stones. The speaker’s description starts fairly: they are so delicate and small. Then it tips over: they don’t mean anything at all. That is not a description any more, it is a verdict. Notice how quickly he moves from what he sees to what he has decided.

Planted with a pin

He cannot think how the plants get in, and jokes that she must use a pin. It is a lovely joke and it does two things at once. It makes the plants sound absurdly tiny, and it admits that the speaker cannot do what Mrs Jones does. Under the mockery there is a man who has no idea how this kind of gardening works.

An invitation

The third stanza changes the setting. Mrs Jones once asked the speaker round to see her stones. Even the invitation is described in his words, not hers: to see her stones. He is being invited into someone’s pride, and he arrives still thinking about rock.

A quarter of an hour

They stood talking about one flower for quite a quarter of an hour. Fifteen minutes is a long time to discuss one plant. The word quite is doing quiet work there, suggesting the speaker felt every minute of it. Mrs Jones, clearly, did not.

Where is this lovely thing?

Then he asks his question, and the poem gives it an exclamation mark: Where is this lovely thing? I cried. He has listened to fifteen minutes of praise and built a picture of something splendid. He is looking up and around, at eye level, for a flower worth all that talk.

You are standing on it

Her reply is five words long. You’re standing on it, she said. The poem stops there. Everything the speaker assumed collapses at once: the flower was not grand, it was not at eye level, and it was under his shoe the entire time he was being rude about her garden.

Who the joke is on

It is easy to read this as a poem that laughs at Mrs Jones. Read the last two lines again and the aim changes. She knew where the flower was. She had talked about it for a quarter of an hour. He was the one who could not see it, and he was the one standing on it. The laugh is at the looking, not at the garden.

How the poem keeps its temper

Nothing cruel is ever said out loud. Mrs Jones is never called silly. The speaker reports her opinion fairly: she thinks the sundial rather nice. The comedy comes from the gap between his certainty and the facts, and the poem lets that gap do the work instead of making fun of anybody directly.

Small is not the same as worthless

The speaker’s mistake has a shape you will meet again. He decides that because the plants are small, they do not mean anything. Size and worth are not the same measure. A rockery plant is small because that is how it survives on stone, and the one he could not find was the one worth a quarter of an hour.

Two ways of seeing one garden

By the end, two complete views of the same patch of ground sit side by side. One sees stones, oddity and a waste of space. The other sees a crazy path, a pond, a rockery, a sundial that is rather nice, and a flower worth talking about. The poem does not tell you which view is right. It only shows you which one had its eyes open.

What to carry out of this topic

Three things. The list of what the garden holds, in the poem’s order. The speaker’s two jokes, about plants that mean nothing and plants put in with a pin. And the five-word reply that turns the poem round. The next topic looks at how the poem is built, and that ending turns out to be a device with a name.

Scenario:

Ishan went to his cousin’s house and was shown a shelf of tiny paper models, none of them taller than a thumb. He said they were cute and then asked when his cousin would build something proper, like a big ship. His cousin spent twenty minutes explaining how one model was folded from a single square with no cuts. Ishan nodded through all of it and then asked which shelf the real models were kept on. His cousin has not shown him anything since, and Ishan still thinks the hobby is a waste of an afternoon.

Analysis:

This is the poem’s situation with paper instead of plants. Ishan measures worth by size, exactly as the speaker does when he decides that small plants do not mean anything at all. The twenty minutes of explanation is the quarter of an hour, and asking for the real models is the same question as Where is this lovely thing? Notice what the poem does not do: it never argues with the speaker. It lets one fact arrive and leaves him to feel it. A fact he discovers himself will land, and a lecture about open-mindedness will not.

Activity:

Pick a hobby you know nothing about. Write three questions you could ask that would show you what is difficult in it.

Title:

The five-word reply

Safety:

Keep the examples light. This is about a hobby or a habit, not about a person you are angry with.

What You Notice:

The short version usually lands harder, because the listener does the last step themselves.

Reginald Arkell wrote comic verse about gardens for years, and also wrote a novel about a head gardener. The joke in this poem comes from someone who clearly knew gardeners well.

A rockery is designed to look like a mountainside, where plants grow small and tough in pockets of soil. Judged that way, Mrs Jones’s garden is a success and the speaker is simply reading it wrong.

A sundial tells the time only while the sun is out, which is why a garden keeps one as an ornament rather than as a clock.

What is in the garden — P-P-R-S: Path, Pond, Rockery, Sundial — Four hard things in the order the first stanza names them: a crazy path, a lily pond, a rockery, and a sundial just beyond.

The shape of the ending — Fifteen minutes, five words — A quarter of an hour of talk about a flower, then five words that end it: You are standing on it.

Four devices, one short poem

This poem is eighteen lines long and uses four devices you can name. A refrain opens every stanza. The rhyme runs in pairs. The ending turns on situational irony. The title is a pun. None of them is decoration: take any one away and the poem loses either its shape or its joke. This topic takes them one at a time.

The refrain

A refrain is a line or phrase repeated in each stanza. Here it is the opening: My next-door neighbour, Mrs Jones. It appears three times, once at the head of each stanza. That is unusual enough to notice, because a refrain more often closes a stanza than opens it. Opening with it means every new section of the poem begins by pointing at the same person.

What the refrain achieves

Three effects, all useful. It keeps the subject fixed on Mrs Jones rather than on the garden. It makes the poem feel like gossip over a fence, since that is how people begin sentences about neighbours. And it sets up a rhythm the reader trusts, so the surprise in the last two lines lands against something steady.

The rhyme, in pairs

Look at the line endings of the first stanza: Jones, stones, pond, beyond, device, nice. The first two rhyme, the next two rhyme, and the last two rhyme. Written as letters that is AABBCC. Each pair closes with a click, which is why the poem reads quickly and why it sounds light rather than solemn.

How to write a rhyme scheme

The method is simple and worth practising. Give the first line the letter A. Any later line that rhymes with it is also A. The first line with a new sound becomes B, and so on down the stanza. Do not guess from the look of a word, since beyond and pond rhyme while though and through do not.

Alliteration

This device repeats the same sound at the start of words close together. The poem has a neat example in its last line: standing and stones share an st sound, and so does the earlier phrase between the stones. The effect is small but real. The repeated sound ties the words together and makes the line stick.

Imagery

This word covers language that gives the reader something to see, hear or feel. The poem spends most of its lines on it: a crazy path, a lily pond, a rockery, a sundial, plants so small they might be put in with a pin. By the end you could draw the garden, and that is the point. You have to see it to be caught by the ending.

Situational irony

The word names a gap between what is expected and what happens. In situational irony the gap is in the events themselves. Here the speaker spends a quarter of an hour hearing about a flower, cries out to know where this lovely thing is, and learns that he is standing on it. Expected: a grand discovery. Actual: a shoe.

Why the irony needs the build-up

Irony does not work without an expectation to overturn, and the poem builds one carefully. Two stanzas establish that the speaker thinks the plants are too small to matter. Then fifteen minutes of praise makes him look for something splendid. Both of those have to be in place, or the last line is just a fact about where a flower is.

The tone

This is the attitude a poem takes to its subject, and here it is humorous, light-hearted and gently mocking, with the mockery aimed at the speaker. You can hear it in the choice of words: crazy, strange, so delicate and small, planted with a pin. None of it is angry. The poem is enjoying itself.

The title, read twice

A Concrete Example. The first reading is literal: concrete means stone, cement and paving, which is what the garden is mostly made of. The second is the everyday phrase, where a concrete example means a clear and definite case rather than a vague one. The poem is exactly that, a clear case of Mrs Jones’s odd gardening.

Why that counts as a pun

A pun is wordplay that uses one word with two meanings, or words that sound alike. Concrete does the first. Both meanings are honest, both fit the poem, and the reader usually catches the second one last, which is why the title rewards a second look after the ending.

Device, and devices

The poem calls the sundial a strange device, and everything in this topic is also called a device. The two senses are related: a device is a thing made for a purpose. A sundial is made to tell the time and a refrain is made to hold a poem together. Noticing the overlap is a free piece of vocabulary.

What to carry out of this topic

Four names and one method. Refrain, rhyme scheme, situational irony, pun. The method is how you write a rhyme scheme: same sound, same letter, new sound, new letter. Try it on any short poem you like and it will take under a minute.

Scenario:

Your class magazine has printed a six-line poem by a student. It begins and ends with the line Our corridor smells of chalk and rain, and the line endings are rain, again, floor, door, chalk and talk. One pair of words in the middle, slippery steps, repeats an opening sound. The last line reports that the writer, who spends the poem complaining about the corridor, is late because he stopped to look at it. The editor has asked you to write two sentences naming the devices, for younger readers.

Analysis:

Everything here has a name from this topic. A line that comes back is a refrain, although this one frames the poem instead of opening each stanza. The endings pair up, so the scheme is AABBCC, the same as Mrs Jones. Slippery steps is alliteration, a repeated opening sound rather than a rhyme. And the ending is situational irony: the complainer is delayed by the very thing he complains about, which is the opposite of what the poem has led the reader to expect. Note that there is no pun unless a word carries two honest meanings, so do not claim one just to complete the set.

Activity:

Find a short poem in any book and write its rhyme scheme in letters, with the rhyming pairs beside it.

Title:

Six lines, four devices

Safety:

Write about a place, not about a person who could recognise themselves in it.

What You Notice:

The reversal is easiest to write once the refrain and the rhyme are settled, which is the same order Mrs Jones is built in.

A refrain in a poem does the same job as a chorus in a song. You know it is coming, and the lines around it feel new because the refrain does not.

The word irony has several kinds. Situational irony is about events, while verbal irony is about saying the opposite of what you mean, as in calling a downpour lovely weather.

Puns were once thought the lowest form of wit and are now studied as one of the hardest to translate. A joke built on one word rarely survives a change of language.

The four devices in this poem — R-R-I-P: Refrain, Rhyme, Irony, Pun — The refrain opens each stanza, the rhyme runs in pairs, the irony lands in the last two lines, and the pun sits in the title.

How to write a rhyme scheme — Same sound, same letter — Give the first line A. Any line that rhymes with it is also A. The next new sound is B, and so on. Pairs come out as AABBCC.

Four words, and the closest match

The book asks you to pick the word that fits a line of the poem most closely. That is a different question from asking what a word means. Several options will be roughly right, and one will be exact. This topic works through the four lines the book chooses, and names the near misses as well as the match, because the near misses are what make the question worth asking.

A strange device

The choices are unusual, peculiar, new, rare and external. The match is unusual, and peculiar works too, because the speaker means he has not seen anything quite like it. New is wrong, since sundials are ancient. Rare says something about how many exist, not how it strikes him. External means on the outside, which is a different idea altogether.

Rather nice

The choices are pleasant, superior, agreeable, gentle and charming. Mrs Jones finds the sundial pleasant, and agreeable carries the same mild approval. Superior would mean better than other sundials, which she never claims. Gentle describes a manner rather than an ornament. Charming is warmer than the line, which keeps its praise deliberately small.

So delicate

The choices are delicious, fragile, dainty, graceful and weak. Fragile is the match, with dainty close behind for small and pretty. Delicious belongs to food, and shares a root with delicate without sharing its sense. Weak would be unkind and also wrong, because a rockery plant is tough enough to live on stone. Graceful describes movement.

I cried

The choices are exclaimed, wept, shouted, announced and whispered. Exclaimed is the match: said suddenly and aloud. Wept is the trap, because cry does mean weep in other sentences, and here it does not. Shouted is too loud for a garden, announced too formal, and whispered the opposite of what the exclamation mark tells us.

Why near misses matter

Each wrong option in those four sets is wrong for its own reason. One belongs to the wrong field, like delicious. One describes the wrong thing, like graceful. One is too strong, like charming, or too weak, like whispered. Learning to say why an option fails is how you stop guessing, and it is the same skill a good distractor is built to test.

Device, the word the poem uses

The poem calls the sundial a device. A device is a thing made for a purpose, which is why the word stretches so far: a refrain is a poetic device and a mixer grinder is a household one. The book then asks you to sort five narrower words that all live inside that idea.

Implement, tool, equipment

An implement is something that works by being moved by hand, such as a spade or a knife. A tool is used by hand to make or repair, such as a hammer. Equipment is a set of necessary items for one purpose, such as a cricket bat with a helmet and batting gloves. Notice that equipment is a group word, which is why it has no plural in ordinary use.

Appliance, gadget

An appliance is electrical and used to do work in the house, such as a mixer grinder. A gadget is something small that is mechanical or electronic, such as a mobile phone or a laptop. The quick test is where it lives and how big it is: an appliance sits in the kitchen, a gadget fits in a pocket or a bag.

Changing the first letter

The book asks you to make new words by replacing the first letter. From nice come dice, which means to cut into small pieces, rice, the grain we cook, mice, the plural of mouse, and vice, a bad habit. From soil come boil, to heat something, toil, to work very hard, coil, a length of wire in a circle, and foil, the sheets we wrap food in.

Why that exercise is worth doing

It trains your ear. Once you hear that the last four letters carry the sound, rhyme becomes easier to find, spelling patterns become visible, and a word you half know becomes guessable. It is the same ear the rhyme scheme in the last topic asked for.

Apologising to a friend

The speaker steps on a flower, and the poem leaves him there. If he apologised to a friend he would use informal language: I am sorry about your flower, or sorry, I did not mean to. The reply would match it: that is alright, no problem, or these things happen. Short phrases, everyday words, no distance.

Apologising to someone in authority

To a principal or a teacher the same regret needs formal language. I am extremely sorry for not submitting my project work. I owe you an apology for arriving late for three days. I really regret it, and I assure you it will not happen again. The reply is formal too: I accept your apology, please ensure it does not recur.

What changes, and what does not

The feeling does not change. What changes is the register: longer phrases, fuller sentences, no slang, and a promise about the future rather than a shrug. Getting this wrong in either direction is noticeable. No big deal to a principal sounds rude, and I owe you an apology to your brother sounds like a joke.

Writing a notice

A notice announces one thing to many readers. Put the name of the organisation at the top, then the word NOTICE, then the date, then a short title. The body gives the purpose, the date and time, the venue, and whom to contact. Sign off with your name, your signature and your class. It goes inside a box.

The two rules people forget

Use the third person: the Nature Club invites students of Grades 6 to 8, not I invite you. And keep it short, because a notice is read standing up at a board. If a reader has the purpose, the date, the time, the venue and a contact, the notice has done its work.

What to carry out of this topic

Four matches with their near misses. Five instrument words with a one-word test each. One letter-swapping method. Two registers for the same apology. And five things a notice must carry. All of it came out of an eighteen-line poem about a stony garden.

Scenario:

The Nature Club put up a notice about a Herb Garden being opened. It read: Hi everyone, I am so excited to tell you that we are finally opening our beautiful herb garden, which I personally think will be the nicest corner of the school. Do come along, it will be great fun. Nothing else was written on the sheet. By the end of the week nine students had come to the club room to ask when it was, and the teacher in charge asked for the notice to be rewritten before the opening.

Analysis:

Judge it against the five parts. The purpose is there, buried. The date, the time, the venue and the contact are all missing, which is exactly why nine students had to come and ask. The register is wrong too: Hi everyone, I am so excited and it will be great fun belong in a message to a friend, and a notice uses the third person because it speaks to everybody at once. Notice what is not wrong. The writer was not careless about spelling or grammar. The failure is one of form, and form is what a notice is for.

Activity:

Rewrite the whole notice in a box, with all five parts, in under sixty words.

Title:

Two apologies, one mistake

Safety:

Invent the mistake or use one of your own. Do not write about something a classmate did.

What You Notice:

The underlined words are the register, and there are usually fewer of them than you expect.

Nek Chand built the Rock Garden of Chandigarh out of stones and waste material, working in secret for years. A garden of stones is not an odd idea at all, and his covers around forty acres.

A notice is written in the third person because it is addressed to everybody at once. Writing I invite you turns an announcement into a letter.

English keeps whole families of words that differ by one letter: nice, dice, rice, mice and vice all share four of their five letters. The ending does the rhyming work.

The five instrument words — Hand, Make, Set, House, Pocket — Hand is an implement, Make is a tool, Set is equipment, House is an appliance, and Pocket is a gadget. Five words, five one-word tests.

What a notice must carry — P-D-T-V-C: Purpose, Date, Time, Venue, Contact — Five things, and a reader who has them needs to ask nothing else. Anything left over is detail.