When icicles hang by the wall (Love's Labour's Lost)

William Shakespeare

Teacher card

Published: 1623, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Length: 16 lines, 105 words, 1 word in 53 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: wind, winter
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

When icicles hang by the wall,And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,And Tom bears logs into the hall,And milk comes frozen home in pail,When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,Then nightly sings the staring owl:“Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!” A merry note,While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,And birds sit brooding in the snow,And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,Then nightly sings the staring owl:“Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!” A merry note,While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

William Shakespeare (died 1616), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1623), lines 95995–96011 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 · 16 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-icicles

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-icicles-hang-by-the-wall · popplepoetry.com