​FOUR LITTLE FOXES

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CLASS VI

​ OCTOBER

​ SANTHI

Four Little Foxes (poem)

by Santhi Boppana

​LEW SARETT

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American author, lecturer, and poet Lew Sarett spent years as a woodsman and a forest ranger, which influenced his nature poems.Sarett’s nature poetry, influenced by years of working as a park ranger and as a forest guide in Minnesota and Canada, earned him the Levinson Prize in Poetry in 1921.

​Poem summary:

The speaker in the poem pleads with early Spring to come gently without making much noise, for the previous day, he had found four newborn fox cubs wriggling on the ground in the windy valley where he lives. He begs the cold March winds to blow softly for the cubs had watched their mother die, her feet caught in a trap and her blood splattered on the snow. He asks the Spring to tread softly and not scare the babies; they were blue with cold and starving. When he covered them with branches to warm them, they had suckled his hand. He requests March to tread softly with its wild storms because the baby foxes were cuddling up to one another, shivering and whining in the sleet.

​Answer the following questions:

​1. Which season is the speaker addressing?

​2. How does he describe the place where Spring is coming ?

​3. Why does the speaker ask the Spring to be gentle?

​4. How does the speaker show his concern for the babies?

​5. What can you make out about the speaker?

​6. Which figure of speech is used " The speaker addressing the Spring directly?

​7. Identify the imagery in the following expressions:

a. Windy Valley, blood upon the snow, foxes suckled at my arm, new little foxes shivering in the rain.

​1.The onset of Spring.

​2.It is a windy valley where he lives.

​3.He asks early Spring to be gentle as blows through the valley for he had seen four fox cubs huddled together, hungry, frightened and shivering. They had seen their mother blood-splattered and dying with her feet caught in a trap.

​4. He has covered them with branches to keep them warm and is now pleading with Spring to come softly.

​5.He is a kind person, concerned about the cubs in the wild.

​6. Apostrophe: Apostrophe refers to a speech or address to a person who is not present or to a personified object, In the poem the speaker is addressing the season "Spring"

​Cyclone

​ Tornado

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Storm