Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

Thank you very much for joining me.

I'm Mr. Blackburn.

Today, we're going to be exploring Charlotte Smith's poem "To a Nightingale." Before we start, you're going to need a pen and paper.

You'll need to make sure that you've turned notifications or anything, which might distract you, off.

And if you can, you'll need to try and find somewhere quiet to work.

And once you've done all of that, let's get started.

Here's what we're going to be doing today.

First of all, we'll recap your knowledge of the poem.

Then we'll explore the poem in some detail before thinking about the true meaning of the poem.

Finally, we'll tie everything together at the end of the lesson so that you can consolidate all of your knowledge from today.

But let's start off by testing how much you can remember about the poem.

Question number one, how many lines does a sonnet have? Does it have, A, eight lines? Is it 12 lines? Is it 14 lines or is it 16 lines? Three, two, one.

If you said 14 lines and you were correct.

That's one of the ways that we can identify a sonnet.

Next question, who wrote "To a Nightingale"? Was the poem written by Charlotte Smith? Was the poem written by Mary Shelley? Was the poem written by William Wordsworth? Or was it written by Hannah More? Three, two, one.

If you said that it was written by Charlotte Smith, then give yourself a point, excellent work.

True or false.

A nightingale is a large bird of prey.

Three, two, one.

That answer is false.

A nightingale is a small fragile bird, not something big and dangerous.

This question then, what is a volta? Is a volta part of the rhyme scheme? Is a volta the point of change in a poem? Is a volta the way it's laid out on the page? Or is it the number of syllables in a sentence? Three, two, one.

If you said that a volta was the point of change in a poem, then you are exactly right, good work.

Okay, what do we think the tone of the poem is? So what's the overall feeling.

Is the tone one of happiness? Is the tone one of joy? Is it one of anger? Or is it one of sadness? Three, two, one.

If you've said that it was a tone of sadness, which run through the poem, then you've got that correct, well done.

The overall feeling is sadness.

And that's one of the things that Charlotte Smith wrote quite a lot about.

Now, well done if you've got all of these answers right.

Don't worry if you didn't, we'll practise them again, no doubt, at some point in the future, But now it's time to explore the poem in some more detail.

"Poor melancholy bird, that all night long tell'st to the moon thy tale of tender woe; from what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow, and whence this mournful melody of song? Thy poet's musing fancy would translate what means the sounds that swell thy little breast, when still at dewy eve though leav'st thy nest, thus to the listening night to sing thy fate.

Pale Sorrow's victims wert thou once among, though now released in woodlands wild to rove.

Say, hast thou felt from friends some cruel wrong, or diedst though martyr of disastrous love? Ah, songstress sad, that such my lot might be, to sigh and sing at liberty, like thee!" So this is Charlotte Smith's sad poem about a nightingale.

And we're going to break it down into these sections.

So the first two lines, the next two lines, two sets of four lines, and the last two lines.

And if you think about what the correct structural term for those might be, two lines of poetry is a couplet.

Four lines of poetry is a quartering.

So today we're going to be looking at different couplets and quarterings in the poem.

Now I really like the opening lines of this.

And I think it sets the tone for the entire poem.

But we need to understand what Charlotte Smith says when she writes, "Poor melancholy bird, that all night long tells to the moon thy tale of tender woe." Because if we don't understand what melancholy is, we can't understand the poem.

So what is melancholy? Well, it means to feel very sad without having a reason why.

And here it is in a sentence, "The rain made my feeling of melancholy worse," or "Melancholy affected the group of friends," or "Although he could have been happy, he chose a life of melancholy instead." So being sad without really knowing why or having a reason, that's how Charlotte Smith describes the nightingale.

And perhaps that's how Charlotte Smith feels herself.

"Tell'st to the moon." Well, why on earth would the nightingale be singing to the moon of all things? Why isn't it singing to another nightingale? Maybe the moon is just as lonely in the sky.

Maybe it's lonely like the Nightingale is, and the moon might understand.

Or perhaps it's because the moon has to listen because it can't run away.

The moon is there all night.

It's going to have to stay and listen to the nightingale Equally, the moon won't interrupt.

The nightingale can talk and talk and tell the moon all of its problems. And there's nobody else who's awake at night to be able to discuss these feelings.

Perhaps the nightingale has no choice but to talk to the moon because there are no other nightingales, I guess, around for it to talk to.

Now again, if we think that the nightingale is actually representative of Charlotte Smith, then we can assume that Charlotte Smith feels like she has no one to talk to.

And she has to express all of her feelings to something inanimate, like the moon.

So I've annotated here next to "Poor melancholy bird, that all night long tells the moon thy tale of tender woe," that it's sadness without knowing why and the imagery of the night emphasises loneliness.

And as we go along, you want to add to notes about the poem.

Here's the next couplet.

The next two lines of poetry.

"From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow, and whence this mournful melody of song?" Now, I really love the language that Charlotte Smith is used here, sweet sorrow, mournful melody.

And I like it because you might notice that the words both start with the same letter, sweet sorrow, mournful melody.

This is an example of alliteration.

And that's when two or more words, which are next to each other, start with the same sound.

And I think that it adds to a musical nature of the poem.

Now here, Charlotte Smith is asking what reason there is for the nightingale to be sad? Sweet sorrow flowing reminds me of tears.

And whence means from where this mournful melody of song comes from.

And mournful means being really, really sad.

So we've only annotated four lines of the poem so far, but they both deal with sadness.

The sweet sorrow and mournful melody reflect the musical nature of the nightingale song.

And perhaps they contrast with the content of that song.

The joyful song of a nightingale is actually communicating its sadness.

So here, I want you to pause the video for just a second while you make some notes next to this couplet.

The alliteration makes the poem sound like what? And Smith doesn't understand, what doesn't she understand about the nightingale? Take a couple of minutes and then come back and we'll see if you've annotated the same way I have.

Welcome back.

Now, here's what I think we should have written.

The alliteration makes the poem some musical sweet sorrow and mournful melody they make it sound musical.

And Smith doesn't understand why the bird is sad.

She can't understand what there is for the nightingale to be sad about.

If your annotations is slightly different, that's okay.

But as a minimum, I want you to make sure you have those answers down.

Okay, let's move on to this quartering.

This four lines section of poetry.

"Thy poet's musing fancy would translate what mean the sounds that swell thy little breast, when still at dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest, thus to the listening night to sing thy fate." "Thy poet's music fancy would translate.

What mean the sounds that swell thy little breast." What on earth is she saying? Well, let's think about it this way.

Who is the poet? Well, the poet is Charlotte Smith.

We know that, she's written the sonnet.

So she's talking about herself in this sonnet.

What is there that's being translated? Well, she thinks she's translating what she thinks the nightingale's song means.

So she's trying to tell us what the nightingale might be singing about.

Of course, she might be talking about herself, really.

And what are the sounds that swell thy little breast? What is she talking about there? Well, the sounds are the sad song of the nightingale.

So all this couplet means is Charlotte Smith is translating what the sad song of the nightingale means to her.

"When still at dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest, thus to the listening night to sing thy fate." Well, the word that interests me most here is fate.

"At dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest," that just means the nightingale flies when it gets dark, but fate very much interests me.

Fate means that you don't have control over what happens in your life.

So the idea is that whatever happens to you is controlled by fate rather than your decisions.

And the fact that the nightingale is singing about it's fate to the moon, makes it sound as though the nightingale is sad because it has no control over its own life.

It has no choice but to leave its nest each night to sing to the moon, that's just what fate wants it to do.

And maybe that mirrors the way that Smith feels about her own life.

Perhaps she feels as though she has no control over her own destiny.

I want you to make some notes about the quartering we've just analysed.

And I've given you some sentence starters for your notes.

Smith feels as though only she can, dot, dot, dot.

Perhaps the nightingale has no control over its life? And this might reflect what? What does it tell us about Charlotte Smith? So again, I want you to pause the video, make some annotations and when you come back, we'll see if your annotations match mine.

Welcome back, here's what I've written.

Smith feels as though only she can understand the nightingale's sadness.

Perhaps the nightingale has no control over its own life.

And this might reflect Smith's own view of life.

Perhaps she also feels like she has no control.

Again, your notes might look different and that's okay, but I want to make sure that there's a minimum you've written what I've written.

The next quartering in the poem, the next four lines.

"Pale Sorrow's victims wert thou once among, though now released in woodlands wild to rove; say, hast though felt from friends some cruel wrong, or diedst though martyr of disastrous love?" This is where we see the change in the poem, the volta in the poem.

She stops talking about how sad the nightingale is.

And now she's trying to diagnose why the nightingale might be so melancholic.

So what is she actually saying in these four lines of poetry? Let's start with this one.

"Pale Sorrow's victims wert thou once among." So she thinks that perhaps something had happened in the nightingale's past, which caused it to feel sad and melancholy.

Perhaps it's reacting to something which had upset it.

"Felt from friends some cruel wrong." She supposes that perhaps the nightingale was hurt by some friends or someone close to it.

And perhaps Smith had been hurt in this way as well.

Why else would she be suggesting this to the nightingale? And her final diagnosis, her final suggestion why the nightingale might be sad is because it's a martyr of a disastrous love.

Well, a martyr is someone who dies for their beliefs.

So perhaps there was a love which only hurt the bird.

So the bird was so in love with, I'm assuming, another nightingale that it felt there was no way to live a life, unless it could be in love with that nightingale.

And that Nightingale probably didn't return it's love.

Now, again, this might reflect Charlotte Smith's own life.

Perhaps she felt so in love with someone that she was eventually betrayed by.

We know contextually, of course, that she was married.

She had a husband who she had 12 children with, who she later divorced.

So perhaps this line, this disastrous love is making a reference to her own disastrous love.

So again, I've highlighted the quartering for you and I've given you one sentence starter.

I want you to annotate what that quartering is telling us.

Smith imagines why the nightingale might be sad and suggests that there are three reasons she suggests the nightingale might be sad.

I want you to write them down.

Pause the video, when you're finished, come back and we'll see if our answers match.

Welcome back, Smith imagines why the nightingale might be sad and suggest that it might be because the bird has been hurt by friends or love, which had not worked out the way it should have.

And now onto the last couplet.

"Ah, songstress sad, that such my lot might be, to sigh and sing at liberty, like thee!" This is the last two lines.

It sounds quite important.

So "Ah, songstress sad," says Charlotte Smith.

She's talking directly to the nightingale.

This is an example of direct address.

So we know that she's talking straight to the nightingale.

"That such my lot might be," she wishes her life was as simple as the nightingale's.

I imagine the nightingale's life is reasonably simple.

Wake up, fly around a bit, sing to the moon, get back in your nest.

I'm guessing that Charlotte Smith's life probably wasn't as simple.

And she wishes that it were.

"To sigh and sing at liberty, like thee!" Now liberty means freedom.

And from this line, we learn that the nightingale has a freedom, which Smith feels as though she doesn't.

Smith doesn't feel as though she's free to sigh and sing whenever she wants.

She feels like she has to keep her feelings inside.

She's jealous of the nightingale for what it's able to do.

And then the last two words, like thee, again, she's talking straight to the nightingale and she's reminding it how lucky it is to be able to fly away from all its problems. Because that's something that Charlotte Smith can't do.

We have two lines left to annotate.

A couplet left to annotate.

"Ah, songstress sad, that such my lot to might be, to sigh and sing at liberty, like thee!" And in your notes, I want you to start off with Smith reveals that she is, what? How does she feel towards the nightingale? Pause the video, fill in your answers, and when you're done, let's see if our answers match.

Welcome back, simple one this.

Smith reveals that she is jealous of the bird or jealous of the nightingale because it can fly away and she can't.

Excellent work annotating the poem.

Hopefully, you have a better understanding of what Charlotte Smith is saying.

Now we're going to think about what the meaning of the poem is.

And sonnets are great for trying to work out the meaning because they're generally divided into two parts.

Firstly, there's a problem.

And secondly, there's a solution.

So let's think about firstly, what problem Smith had in the poem? I'm going to give you a choice of three problems. What Smith's problem in the poem that she couldn't understand why the nightingale was sad? What Smith's poem in the sonnet that she was unable to express her own emotions because she didn't have the words? Or was it that Smith was unable to talk to the moon because it was a cloudy night? Have a read of those problems and think which one best describes what Charlotte Smith's problem was in the sonnet.

Three, two, one.

Hopefully, you correctly identified that Charlotte Smith's problem to begin with was that she couldn't understand why the nightingale would be sad.

It's got such an easy life.

It can fly away.

Why would it be sad? So we've identified the problem.

The next thing we need to think about to understand the meaning is, what did Smith learn about herself from the poem? What was the solution to the sonnet that she learned about herself? Again, three options.

Was it that she learned she could always tell the moon about her problems? Was it that she learned she was jealous of the way the nightingale can fly away? Or was it that she learned she didn't really like nightingales very much? Three, two, one.

Hopefully, you have correctly identified the second option, which was that she was jealous of the nightingale for being able to fly away.

I don't think it was that she didn't like nightingales very much.

In fact, I think that Charlotte Smith wrote more than one poem about nightingales.

She obviously liked them quite a lot.

All right, so we've looked at the poem in some detail.

We've thought about what the problem was at the beginning and what Charlotte Smith learned about herself by the end.

Now we're going to look at what you know now.

So I've got three questions for you to answer.

And I've given you some sentence starters.

What does Smith wonder about the nightingale? What reasons does Smith give for the nightingale feeling sad? And what reason does Smith have to be jealous of the nightingale? Pause the video, answer these in full, grammatically correct sentences.

And when you're done, come back, and we'll see if our answers are the same.

And welcome back, everyone.

Here are my answers.

Yours might look slightly different and that's fine.

But I want you to make sure that you have all of the information in my answers in yours.

The first question was, what does Smith wonder about the nightingale? And my answer is Smith wonders why the Nightingale is so melancholy when it should be happy.

If you haven't included the word melancholy in your answer, I think that's probably a good thing to include.

Question two asks, what reasons does Smith give for the nightingale feeling sad? My answer was that Smith's suggests that the nightingale is sad because it has been hurt by its friends or by a love which went badly.

Again, your answer might look different, but if you don't have those two reasons, make sure you add them in.

The third question asked, why is Smith jealous of the nightingale? My answer is Smith is jealous of the nightingale because it can fly away and escape its problems, which Smith can't do herself.

So remember, the problem is she's trying to work out why the nightingale is sad.

She learns that she's jealous at the nightingale because she can't fly away from her problems in the same way the nightingale can.

If you need to add something to your answers now is the time to do it.

Wonderful work today, everyone.

We've annotated the poem.

We've thought about what Charlotte Smith was telling us.

We've thought about what her problem was, and what she learned about herself by the end of the sonnet, excellent work.

The last thing I want you to do is make sure you take the quiz at the end of the lesson to prove to yourself how much you know.

Well done, everything you've done today, goodbye.