1. ‘I can imagine....’ D.H. Lawrence: Humming Bird Date: Warm up:
Objectives:
Introduce and annotate the poem
Explore the themes of Individuality and Imagination
Warm up:
‘I can imagine....’
Finish the above statement. Don’t look for the comedic or rude answer. Honestly think and finish the sentence.

2. Context for this poem - note
The poet was reading a book about humming-birds and noticed he had never seen one. This poem is him indulging in a flight of fancy, imagining the bird.
Have you seen one?

3. ‘Humming-Bird’ D.H. Lawrence I can imagine, in some otherworld
Primeval-dumb, far back
In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and hummed,
Humming-birds raced down the avenues.  
Before anything had a soul,
While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate,
This little bit chipped off in brilliance
And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.  
I believe there were no flowers, then,
In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of creation.
I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his long beak.  
Probably he was big
As mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big.
Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.
We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time,
Luckily for us.

4. Notes– Form
A free-verse, natural poem that gives the strong sense that the poet in thinking in the moment. You can hear the speakers voice ‘I believe..’, ‘Probably he was ...’.
The multiple adjectives he gives slows down the down while the active verbs speed it up.

5. Notes – line 1-8
We are taken back in time to an awful place, pre-souls, barely liveable where the only distinct life is this bird.
The speaker compares the decrepit land to the speed and brilliance of the bird. This bird may represent the poet.
(Let’s discuss this comparison).

6. Notes – Lines 8-11
There are no flowers here. The bird is ahead of its time and ingeniously finds a way to survive.
The bird may also represent ‘imagination’, taking life from tiny deposits and making it into flashing brilliance.
Lawrence hated modern science. He believed it opposed and stifled the imagination. Thoughts?

7. Notes – Lines 11-13
There is the feeling again that he is writing down these thoughts as they come to him, without censorship or change. He let’s his imagination go wild.

8. Notes – lines 14-15
He ends on a humorous twist, joking we are looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope.
We may be looking at the entire world wrong?
Do you agree with this sometimes – that we look at things wrong? (Voting age?)

9. Questions: Remember “quotes”.
How is the world the speaker describes in the poem different to our world today? Give as much detail as you can.
How is the bird different to the word it inhabits?
What do you think the bird represents?