Two Full Worked Comparisons: From Reading to Finished Paragraphs

How to use this lesson

This lesson runs two complete comparisons from cold reading to finished paragraphs, using short, free-to-quote historic poems so that the method is traceable line by line. The aim is not to memorise the analyses themselves — on exam day the poems will be different — but to internalise the process. After each worked example, you will see the same four-stage shape: read, matrix, overview, paragraphs.

Both comparisons are shortened to keep things manageable; real exam poems are longer (typically 14–30 lines each), and your real responses will be slightly fuller. The logic, however, scales directly.

Worked Comparison 1

The poems

Poem A — from William Blake, "The Tyger" (public domain), opening stanza:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Poem B — from William Wordsworth, "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" (public domain), opening four lines:

Earth has not any thing to shew more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare...

The question (hypothetical)

"Compare the ways the writers present awe in both poems. In your answer, you should consider the writers' use of language, form and structure."

Stage 1 — 3-read summary

Poem A: The speaker addresses a tiger directly, struck by its fearful beauty, and asks what kind of maker could have forged it. Awe is tinged with terror.

Poem B: The speaker, on Westminster Bridge, declares that nothing on earth is fairer than this view, and describes London clothed in morning beauty. Awe is tinged with stillness and reverence.

Both poems present awe — but Blake's awe is violent and questioning, Wordsworth's is still and confident.

Stage 2 — matrix plan

	Poem A (Blake)	Poem B (Wordsworth)
Language (imagery)	"burning bright" — fire/dangerous light; "fearful symmetry" — paradox	"garment" — metaphor of clothing, gentle personification; "silent, bare" — hushed
Form	Trochaic tetrameter, strict rhymed couplets, incantatory	Iambic pentameter, early lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, measured
Structure	Opens with direct address, ends the stanza with a question	Opens with declarative superlative ("not any thing...more fair"), moves into descriptive sentence

Stage 3 — overview sentence

Both Blake and Wordsworth present awe, but where Blake stages it as fearful interrogation — addressing the creature and its maker in rhythmic, question-driven couplets — Wordsworth delivers awe as declarative stillness, folding the city into the measured cadence of a sonnet's opening.

Stage 4 — paragraphs

Paragraph 1 (language / imagery):

Both poets reach for light imagery to convey awe, but to opposed ends. Blake's "burning bright" recruits fire — a sensory image of illumination fused with danger — so that awe becomes inseparable from threat; the alliteration of plosive-adjacent sounds adds percussive urgency, and the paradox of "fearful symmetry" yokes terror to order, refusing to let beauty be simply beautiful. Wordsworth, by contrast, uses a far softer metaphor: the city "doth, like a garment, wear / The beauty of the morning". The simile clothes London, granting the cityscape gentle, almost human agency. Where Blake's imagery burns, Wordsworth's drapes; where Blake makes awe dangerous, Wordsworth makes it domestic.

Paragraph 2 (form):

The two poets' metres perform their differing modes of awe. Blake writes in trochaic tetrameter — a falling, hammer-like rhythm — organised into rhymed couplets ("bright / night / eye / symmetry"). The insistent end-rhyme and driving beat enact incantation, as if the speaker must chant to hold the tiger in focus. Wordsworth, writing the opening of a Petrarchan sonnet, uses flexible iambic pentameter that allows long, breath-like sentences to unfold. Blake's form hammers; Wordsworth's form breathes. Where Blake's short lines mimic the rapid, frightened pulse of encounter, Wordsworth's longer pentameter lines settle the reader into reverent stillness.

Paragraph 3 (structure):

Structurally, both openings frame awe as a kind of discovery, but at different speeds. Blake's first stanza is built around a question — "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" — that propels the poem forward; awe generates enquiry. Wordsworth's opening reverses the move: he begins with a declarative absolute — "Earth has not any thing to shew more fair" — and then unfolds justification. Blake opens with an image and ends his stanza asking after its maker; Wordsworth opens with a verdict and ends his opening lines supplying evidence. Awe, for Blake, is structured as enquiry; for Wordsworth, as verdict first, contemplation second.

Closing (optional):

Both poems make awe structural as well as lexical, but the one propels awe into questioning rhythm while the other settles it into declarative calm.

That is a full worked comparison. Note: three paragraphs, one overview sentence, one optional closing. Every paragraph names techniques in both poems, quotes both poems, and bridges them explicitly.

Worked Comparison 2

The poems

Poem A — from Christina Rossetti, "Remember" (public domain), opening quatrain:

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Poem B — an invented stanza in a similar register (written for this course), on the same theme:

Do not mourn me in the dark-edged room; do not stitch my name into the air. Let the curtain lift. Let the day come in. I am nowhere held, and everywhere.

The question (hypothetical)

"Compare the ways the writers present parting in both poems. In your answer, you should consider the writers' use of language, form and structure."

Stage 1 — 3-read summary

Poem A (Rossetti): The speaker addresses a loved one and asks to be remembered after her death. The parting is framed by physical loss — the hand that can no longer be held — but softened by the delicate, half-turning movement of the final line.

Poem B (invented): The speaker tells the loved one not to mourn closed-in, and instead to let the light in. Parting is framed not as loss but as release; the speaker is "nowhere held, and everywhere".

Both poems speak from the position of the one leaving, addressing the one remaining — but Rossetti's speaker is gentle-wistful, while Poem B's speaker is insistent-liberatory.

Stage 2 — matrix plan

	Poem A (Rossetti)	Poem B (invented)
Language	"silent land" — euphemism, hushed; "hold me by the hand" — tactile memory	"dark-edged room" — visual, negative; "nowhere held, and everywhere" — paradox
Form	Iambic pentameter quatrain, ABBA embraced rhyme, formal sonnet opening	Mixed line lengths, half-rhyme at most, no fixed metre
Structure	Opens with imperative "Remember me", softens toward ambivalent "turning stay"	Opens with double negative imperative "Do not... do not...", resolves with paradoxical assertion

Stage 3 — overview sentence

Both poems speak from the threshold of parting, but where Rossetti shapes her farewell as an embraced sonnet-opening that honours the loved one's loss, the second poem breaks from formality to issue a commanding release, asking the mourner not to bind grief indoors.

Stage 4 — paragraphs

Paragraph 1 (language):

The two poems build their paintings of parting from opposed palettes of diction. Rossetti euphemises death as "the silent land", a metaphor that softens loss into landscape and hush, while the tactile memory of "hold me by the hand" anchors the farewell in a physical intimacy the speaker knows will end. By contrast, Poem B opens with the negatively charged "dark-edged room", a space the speaker urges the mourner to leave; the adjective "dark-edged" does double work, both literal (the closed room) and emotional (the edge of despair). Both poets use spatial language, but Rossetti maps parting onto a distant, reverent elsewhere, while Poem B maps it onto a room the mourner must be led out of. The paradox of Poem B's closing line — "nowhere held, and everywhere" — pushes language to its limit, insisting that the speaker cannot be located by grief.

Paragraph 2 (form):