PRE-READING 1. Do you have any friends that you have lost touch with but often think about?
2. The writer George Orwell once said: ‘At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves.’ Do you agree with him?
COMPREHENDING AND RESPONDING
1. What picture do you imagine when you read the first four lines of this poem? Explain you answer.
2. Discuss the impact of the personification of autumn in lines 5–6.
3. What attitude to Con Markiwicz does Yeats reveal in lines 7–9? Support your answer with reference to the poem.
4. What attitude to Eva Gore-Booth does Yeats reveal in lines 10–13? Support your answer with reference to the poem.
5. Why do you think Yeats wishes ‘to seek/ One or the other out’? Give reasons for your answer.
6. Explain what you think Yeats means when he writes ‘The innocent and the beautiful/ Have no enemy but time’.
7. What would Yeats like to do with time in lines 26–27?
8. The last line of this poem has been described as ambiguous. What do you think it means?
9. What is the tone of this poem? Does it change or remain consistent throughout? Support your answer with reference to the poem.
10. What, in your opinion, is the theme of this poem? Explain your answer.
11. Having read this poem, do you think it is a fitting tribute to Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz? Explain your answer.
CREATING
1. Write a short story that begins with two young women standing by a window in a large old house in early autumn.
2. Write an article for a popular magazine in which you discuss how we are forgetting to actually enjoy special moments in our lives in our eagerness to record them digitally, and encouraging your readers to put down their smartphones.
3. ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.’ Write a blog post inspired by this proverb.
4. Write an obituary for either Eva Gore-Booth or Con Markiewicz.
