The Best Game the Fairies Play by Rose Fyleman: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

The Best Game the Fairies Play by Rose Fyleman: poem

Video: https://youtu.be/imlVYl4Q5tw

The best game the fairies play,

    The best game of all,

Is sliding down steeples—

    (You know they’re very tall).

You fly to the weathercock,

    And when you hear it crow,

You fold your wings and clutch your things

    And then let go!

They have a million other games—

    Cloud-catching’s one,

And mud-mixing after rain

    Is heaps and heaps of fun;

But when you go and stay with them

    Never mind the rest,

Take my advice—they’re very nice,

    But steeple-sliding’s best!

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx Rose Fyleman playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x4xUwv4w9lyRwzhwcOr3STr&si=EH6dD3aCICn53mpX https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

My Last Will by Joe Hill: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

Related Playlists:

Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd

ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx

https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

Bad King John by Eleanor Farjeon: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

Bad King John by Eleanor Farjeon: poem

Video: https://youtu.be/5lDioPvdqCs

John, John, bad King John

Shamed the throne that he sat on;

Not a scruple, not a straw,

Cared this monarch for the law;

Promises he daily broke;

None could trust a word he spoke;

So the Barons brought a Deed;

Down to rushy Runnymede,

Magna Carta was it hight,

Charter of the People’s Right,

Framed and fashioned to correct

Kings who act with disrespect –

And with stern and solemn air,

Pointing to the parchment there,

“Sign! Sign! Sign!” they said

“Sign, King John, or resign instead!”

John, John, turning pale,

Ground his teeth and bit his nail;

Chewed his long moustache; and then

Ground and bit and chewed again.

“Plague upon the People!” he

Muttered, “What are they to me?

Plague upon the Barons, too!”

(Here he had another chew,)

But the Barons, standing by,

Eyed him with a baleful eye;

Not a finger did they lift;

Not an eyelash did they shift;

But with one tremendous roar,

Even louder than before,

“Sign! Sign! Sign!” they said,

“SIGN, KING JOHN, OR RESIGN INSTEAD!”

Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx Eleanor Farjeon Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7QKa64WEUJ_-axsb1xkf8I&si=Cs6-Jb5OPBZ4lEdm https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

If-- by Rudyard Kipling: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

If-- by Rudyard Kipling: poem

Video: https://youtu.be/LuLF4QlA3Po

If you can keep your head when all about you

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    ⁠And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    ⁠Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

    ⁠And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx Rudyard Kipling Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7cFPBSbyoFDZF_J5rOX4p6&si=d2Xk1ahKTBYKTlm_ https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

Futility by Wilfred Owen: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

Futility by Wilfred Owen: poem

Video: https://youtu.be/iBGnFSSl47w

Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—

Woke once the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx Wilfred Owen Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7Ym1NH43ynv0Lqscq716CV&si=18P0dJaSFd8X8wFx https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

A Complaint by Rose Fyleman: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

A Complaint by Rose Fyleman: poem

Video: https://youtu.be/_xAzNyVbXcI

You’ve stolen all our mushrooms!

When friends come in to tea

In Fairyland it is the rule

To offer them a satin stool;

The grass is often very wet

And furniture is hard to get,

As you must all agree.

You've stolen all our mushrooms

And left not one behind.

If people came by night and day

And took your prettiest chairs away

And made them all into a stew

Without so much as thanking you,

Now would you call it kind ?

You've stolen all our mushrooms,

And, if you don't take care,

We'll go about the fields at night

And paint the toadstools brown and white,

And you'll be punished for your greed

By being very ill indeed

So you had best beware.

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx Rose Fyleman playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x4xUwv4w9lyRwzhwcOr3STr&si=EH6dD3aCICn53mpX https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth: Poem

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth: poem

Video: https://youtu.be/4rdx5CjaOLg

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

High Windows by Philip Larkin: ESL Listening

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

High Windows by Philip Larkin: poems

Video: https://youtu.be/HzNPfG9Rx8I

When I see a couple of kids

And guess he’s fucking her and she’s   

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,   

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—   

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if   

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,   

And thought, That’ll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide   

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide   

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:   

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

August 1968 by W. H. Auden: ESL Listening

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

August 1968 by W. H. Auden: poems

Video: https://youtu.be/wraCENswwfo

The Ogre does what ogres can,

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master Speech:

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx W. H. Auden Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x6IBvsmruIQCu_lJ5HJFDlT&si=sD8DOhRigpVu9UwR https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

Epitaph On A Tyrant by W. H. Auden: ESL Listening

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

Epitaph On A Tyrant by W. H. Auden: poems

Video: https://youtu.be/-BZSUA8oqFQ

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Related Playlists: Poems ESL Listening Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7ReDXIOlVgC1Ci0mGdDWqd ESL Listening Exercises Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7xq-zLjulU2DRTjg2TNmAx

https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice

Daddy Fell Into the Pond by Alfred Noyes: ESL Listening

(TESOL Worksheets--Poems ESL Listening)

Transcript: docs, pub
Video: HERE

Daddy Fell Into the Pond by Alfred Noyes: poems

Video: https://youtu.be/08Qgi_9nHtY

Everyone grumbled.  The sky was grey.

We had nothing to do and nothing to say.

We were nearing the end of a dismal day,

And there seemed to be nothing beyond,

                      THEN

          Daddy fell into the pond!

And everyone's face grew merry and bright,

And Timothy danced for sheer delight.

"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!

He's crawling out of the duckweed."

                Click!

Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,

And doubled up, shaking silently,

And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft

And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.

O, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond

                      WHEN

          Daddy fell into the pond!