When daisies pied and violets blue (Love's Labour's Lost)

William Shakespeare

Teacher card

Published: 1623, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Length: 18 lines, 96 words, 1 word in 16 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 5–6. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: spring
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

When daisies pied and violets blueAnd lady-smocks all silver-whiteAnd cuckoo-buds of yellow hueDo paint the meadows with delight,The cuckoo then on every treeMocks married men; for thus sings he:“Cuckoo!Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear,Unpleasing to a married ear.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,When turtles tread, and rooks and daws,And maidens bleach their summer smocks,The cuckoo then, on every tree,Mocks married men, for thus sings he:“Cuckoo!Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear,Unpleasing to a married ear.

William Shakespeare (died 1616), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1623), lines 95974–95992 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 · 18 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-daisies

Send the whole hand-out

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Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/shakespeare-when-daisies-pied-and-violets-blue · popplepoetry.com