Rising Five

Rising Five by Norman Nicholson

In your own words, summarise each stanza in one sentence

What is the effect of the contrast between the direct speech of the opening and the poet's focus on one small aspect of the child? How is the tone of each pair of lines different?

Why does the poet interrupt the line with, 'he said'?

Within the context of the poem, is there a connection between the detail of the hair and the child's use of adult language?

How does the poet subvert our expectations in the phrase, 'brimful of eyes'? What does this indicate about the child's vision? How is this significant within the poem?

Which ideas in line five are later developed in the poem?

Why 'cones' of light?

What image of the boy is conveyed by:
his speech?
his actions?
the decription?
his confectionery consumption?

What effect is created by the poet referring to the child's age as, "He’d been alive/Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more"?

Why is the final line of the stanza laid out to emphasise enjambment?

List from the second stanza examples of
feminine rhyme
assonance
alliteration
sibilance

What is the effect of this outpouring of heightened language effects?

What metaphor is used to personify the beautifying power of spring?

What are the connotations of 'swilled'?

How does the idea of spring connect to stanza one?

How does the final line change the tempo?

How is the third stanza more abstract?

What is the effect on the mood of its being so brief?

How is the light here different from that of stanza one?

How do the elements on the final stanza link to and comment on earlier ideas
The new buds
a boy/Throwing away his toffee-wrappers.
We never see the flower/But only the fruit in the flower;

How does enjambment in the final stanza give a greater sense of pathos to the antitheses established?

What is the effect of using the first person plural?

Compare the first and last lines of the poem. What is the effect? Why did the poem begin in a school?

From the poem, list a line or phrase to illustrate each of the following:
Humour
Pathos
Energy
Beauty

What links can be drawn with other poems about
Children?
Mortality?





Rising Five by Norman Nicholson


‘I’m rising five’, he said,
‘Not four’, and little coils of hair
Un-clicked themselves upon his head.
His spectacles, brimful of eyes to stare
At me and the meadow, reflected cones of light
Above his toffee-buckled cheeks. He’d been alive
Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more:
not four,
But rising five.

Around him in the field the cells of spring
Bubbled and doubled; buds unbuttoned; shoot
And stem shook out the creases from their frills,
And every tree was swilled with green.
It was the season after blossoming,
Before the forming of the fruit:
not May,
But rising June.


And in the sky
The dust dissected tangential light:
not day,
But rising night;
not now,
But rising soon.


The new buds push the old leaves from the bough.
We drop our youth behind us like a boy
Throwing away his toffee-wrappers. We never see the flower,
But only the fruit in the flower; never the fruit,
But only the rot in the fruit. We look for marriage bed
In the baby’s cradle, we look for the grave in the bed:
not living,
But rising dead.