When daffodils begin to peer (The Winter's Tale)

William Shakespeare

Teacher card

Published: 1623, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Length: 12 lines, 93 words, 1 word in 47 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: spring, sun
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

When daffodils begin to peer,With, hey! the doxy over the dale,Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year,For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,With, hey! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,With, hey! with, hey! the thrush and the jay,Are summer songs for me and my aunts,While we lie tumbling in the hay.

William Shakespeare (died 1616), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1623), lines 188857–188870 of Project Gutenberg ebook #100. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 12 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#sx-daffodils

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/shakespeare-when-daffodils-begin-to-peer · popplepoetry.com