Afternoon with Irish cows

Afternoon with Irish cows

1. Line 4: “their big heads down in the soft grass” = (tactile imagery)

2. Line 6 and 7: “look out to see the field suddenly empty as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country” = (simile)

3. Line 11: “on the black-and-white maps on their sides” = (metaphor/ compares to the spots of the cow)

4. Line 13: “how mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded” = (extreme adjectives for something we consider normal, descriptive)

5. Line 16: “would let out a sound so phenomenal” = (extreme adjectives)

6. Line 20 and 21: “to see which one of them was being torched or pierced through the side with long spears)

7. Line 22: “it sounded like pain” = (oral imagery)

8. Line 25 and 26: “labouring upward as she gave voice to the rising, full-bodied cry” = (sound/oral imagery)

9. Line 30: “She was” “announcing” “herself” = (happy, makes you smile)

10. Line 32: “ancient apologia” = (apology)

11. Line 33 and 34: “to all the green fields and grey clouds, to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay” = (visual imagery)

12. Left with the idea that he hears her cries, she notices him and scares him away. It shows the impact of humans on animals/nature, it’s negative

13. He is telling us and anecdote

14. Each stanza tells us a different anecdote