Читать книгу English for Life Reader Grade 9 Home Language - Elaine Ridge - Страница 11

Pre-reading
1.	This poem is about a boy who has been given a magnifying glass. He is intrigued by it and wants to share his discoveries. The monkeys in a cage in a public park look like possible learners.
	Can you remember wanting to tell someone about something you had just learnt or found out how to do? Briefly tell what you did.
During reading
2.	What mistake does the boy make when he tries to share his knowledge?
3.	Why do you think the speaker refers to a “burning-glass” and not a magnifying glass?

At Woodward’s gardens

Robert Frost

A boy, presuming on his intellect,

Once showed two little monkeys in a cage

A burning-glass they could not understand

And never could be made to understand.

Words are no good: to say it was a lens

For gathering solar rays would not have helped,

But let him show them how the weapon worked.

He made the sun a pinpoint on the nose

Of first one, then the other, till it brought

A look of puzzled dimness to their eyes

That blinking could not seem to blink away.

They stood arms laced together at the bars,

And exchanged troubled glances over life.

One put a thoughtful hand up to his nose

As if reminded – as if perhaps

Within a million years of an idea.

He got his purple little knuckles stung.

The already known had once more been confirmed

By psychological experiment,

And that were all the finding to announce

Had the boy not presumed too close and long.

There was a sudden flash of arm, a snatch

And the glass was the monkeys’ not the boy’s.

Precipitately they retired back-cage

And instituted an investigation

On their part, though without the needed insight.

They bit the glass and listened for the flavour.

They broke the handle and the binding off it.

Then none the wiser, frankly gave it up,

And having hid it in their bedding straw

Against the day of prisoners’ ennui

Came dryly forward to the bars again

To answer for themselves:

Who said it mattered

What monkeys did or didn’t understand?

They might not understand a burning-glass.

They might not understand the sun itself.

It’s knowing what to do with things that counts.

prisoners’ ennui – animals in cages, like humans in prison, become bored

presuming on his intellect – overconfident about his knowledge

Post-reading
4.	Monkeys are in some ways like young children. How they go about trying to understand new objects.
5.	When the boy uses his magnifying glass to “create a pinpoint of the sun” on the nose of each of the monkeys, he is not trying to hurt them.
a)	What is he trying to do?
b)	How do the knuckles on the paw of one of the monkeys get burnt?
6.	The speaker uses hyperbole (exaggeration) to describe how long it would take for a monkey to understand a scientific concept. Quote the phrase that he uses.
7.	The poem is not mainly about monkeys. What is the main point of the poem? Reread the first four lines and the last four lines before you answer.