The Princess: Now sleeps the crimson petal

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Teacher card

Published: 1847, in The Princess
Length: 14 lines, 114 words, 1 word in 57 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love, wedding
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:The fire-fly wakens: wake thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now lies the silent meteor on, and leavesA shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,And slips into the bosom of the lake:So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slipInto my bosom and be lost in me.'

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (died 1892), The Princess (1847), lines 3303–3320 of Project Gutenberg ebook #791. 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 names in posy cardsin posy · 14 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#te-crimson

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/tennyson-princess-now-sleeps-the-crimson-petal · popplepoetry.com