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EB March 22, 2013 Think-Aloud Subject/Grade: Reading 10 Objective: Analyze poem Poem: Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most constantly? The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring, Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again And who will call the wild-briar fair? Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now And deck thee with the holly's sheen, That when December blights thy brow He may still leave thy garland green. Ok so I have a poem that I am supposed to analyze in depth. Why dont I look at the title to see if it might relate to anything in the poem? The title is Love and Friendship. Based off of the title, I think that the poem is going to go in depth about love and friendship. Now Ill look at the author. The author is Emily Bronte. I know that she is very famous and that she is a good author. She mostly writes sad and happy novels, so this poem might have a happy ending. Now Im going to start reading and analyzing the poem. So the first line, love is like the wild rosebriar, seems like an easy line to analyze. Now I know that the first line is saying that love is like a wild rose which means that you cant control it and it happens anytime unexpectedly. I dont exactly know what the word briar means, but by using context clues I can assume it has something to deal with plants like a bush or wood. The second line, friendship is like the hollytree, might have something to do with how friendship should be pure. Holly has anything to do with shrubbery and plants. The third line, the holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, is a bit more complex. This could mean that the friendship and love turns sour once the love is gone.
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Since love is careless and wild, no one really knows how it will turn out. Most of the times it just ends completely, so this line is portraying that love isnt forever. Next is the fourth line, but which will bloom most constantly? This probably means that what will prevail: love or darkness. Since bloom means to grow and constantly means persistent. So from that one can infer that it means that what will grow to be persistent: love or darkness/hatred. Its taking a bit of time to explain line by line, so Ill go stanza by stanza now. I dont know why I didnt do that at first. I must not have been thinking. Well any who, onto the next stanza. The next stanza says, the wildrose briar is sweet in the spring, its summer blossoms scent the air; yet wait till winter comes again and who will call the wild-briar fair? The first line of the stanza could most likely mean that sometimes love is sweet and is fun while it lasts. Spring time is usually happy and full of love so it could be used here as another symbol for love. Its summer blossoms scent the air, could mean that love is everywhere. Scent the air could be a symbol that even if love is an inanimate object, you can smell it in the air. You always know when, where, how and who love has stricken. Yet wait till winter comes again. This line could be signaling that a change in mood is about to happen. Since winter is usually associated with death and destruction, but has that glimmer of beauty in it, it could be signaling that love and friendship dies eventually. And who will call the wild-briar fair? Since I know wild means out of control and briar means something to do with nature and plants and fair means flawless, one can assume that it means love has many faults and it will never be perfect. No matter how much one thinks love is perfect, it is unpredictable and it can destroy a person at the same time. The third stanza, then scorn the silly rose-wreath now and deck thee with the holly's sheen, that when December blights thy brow he may still leave thy garland green. The first line, then scorn the silly rose- wreath now, could have an endless amount of meanings. What I got from reading this poem is that it means the person

who acknowledges love and friendship should be aware of its dangers and not go into it with ignorance. Since I know scorn means an expression of contempt and contempt means to despise and despise means to hate then one can infer that love eventually grows into hatred. Roses usually symbolize beauty and love also. A wreath is like a bouquet of flowers just in a circle. And deck thee with the hollys sheen. Hmmmm. Now this sentence doesnt really make sense to me all that much, but I can try. To me I think that the deck symbolizes boarding because decks are associated with boats and to get on a boat you have to board. Thee means yourself. Holly means shrubbery and plants. Im not quite sure what sheen means, but by context clues it could mean brightening. This line could mean that once you board the crazy train that I love, it could brighten you up more than you are already. That when December blights thy brow. Now I know that December is the beginning of winter and it has snow and everything dies. Im not quite sure what blight means, but Ill take a guess and say it has something to do with nature like it is catching some disease and is dying. So, to summarize, this line is stating that winter kills all of nature. Lastly, thank god, the line: he may still leave thy garland green. He may be referring to a bigger picture. Garland means a wreath and a wreath means a ring of flowers. This last, and final line, is saying that a higher power should leave plants green. In other words, love should just happen; no one can force it and plan it out ahead of time. The same goes with friendship. It cant be planned or executed, it just happen and events in life can lead you to it, but you just have to be patient and wait and see. Doing a think-aloud for this assignment has helped me to learn how to better analyze a poem. I think that, even though it may be pointless, this think-aloud has really helped me improve on my reading skills.