人教高中英语高二上UNIT4-4

 When asked about poetry, most people will say that a poem is a text that has rhythm and rhyme. Famous are the lines by William Blake, which have clear rhythm and rhyme:
Other people will add that poems must have a certain form, with a fixed¹ number of lines and a fixed rhyme pattern, such as a sonnet². With rhyme, most people mean the rhyme of sound of words at the end of the lines. It is also true that much of the classical poetry that we have looks like that. Except for some short songs and poems included in his plays, all of Shakespeare's greatest poems are sonnets³.
       John Milton was one of the first poets who started writing poems without rhyme at the end of the lines. He wrote other poems too, but he is famous for his long poems without rhyme. After Milton, almost every poet had a hand at this kind of poetry that was free of rhyme. Wordsworth and Keats wrote some such poems, but that is not what they are famous for. This style of poetry became known as free verse⁴ (自由诗).
       It was not until the twentieth century that modem⁵ poetry was really developed. Modem poets wanted to break with all the traditional forms of poetry. One of the characteristics of modern poetry is that it usually does not have rhyme at the end of a line, and it is also often about common topics.
      In China, free verse was known and used much earlier. The following poem by Bai Juyi is an example of a poem written in free verse.
 

  

1 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

2 sonnet   

n.十四行诗

参考例句：

• The composer set a sonnet to music.作曲家为一首十四行诗谱了曲。
• He wrote a sonnet to his beloved.他写了一首十四行诗，献给他心爱的人。

3 sonnets   

n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Keats' reputation as a great poet rests largely upon the odes and the later sonnets. 作为一个伟大的诗人，济慈的声誉大部分建立在他写的长诗和后期的十四行诗上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He referred to the manuscript circulation of the sonnets. 他谈到了十四行诗手稿的流行情况。 来自辞典例句

4 verse   

n.诗，韵文，诗行

参考例句：

• He is good at verse.他善于作诗。
• His book was in parts written in verse.他的书有许多地方是用韵文写的。

5 modem   

n.调制解调器

参考例句：

• Does your computer have a modem?你的电脑有调制解调器吗？
• Provides a connection to your computer via a modem.通过调制解调器连接到计算机上。