Pike

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** Pike ** ** By Ted Hughes ** **The Poem** Pike, three inches long, perfect Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin. They dance on the surface among the flies.

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, Over a bed of emerald, silhouette Of submarine delicacy and horror. A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads- Gloom of their stillness: Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards. Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date: A life subdued to its instrument; The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass, Jungled in weed: three inches, four, And four and a half: red fry to them- Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with. And indeed they spare nobody. Two, six pounds each, over two feet long High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet: The outside eye stared: as a vice locks- The same iron in this eye Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across, Whose lilies and muscular tench Had outlasted every visible stone Of the monastery that planted them-

Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished With the hair frozen on my head For what might move, for what eye might move. The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods Frail on my ear against the dream Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed, That rose slowly toward me, watching.

**Introductory Activity** Look at the following images of pikes and then note down what you notice about:
 * Its size
 * Colours
 * Its features
 * How it might move through the water
 * Behaviour?

Use the following document to note the two sides of the pike: its impressive nature as well as it being a ruthless killer:
 * Analysis**

Look at the first four stanzas and highlight words, phrases, lines that describe the Pike.

Now think about how Hughes's words compare with our own original ideas about the pike we saw in the pictures.
 * How does he bring the fish to life?
 * What qualities does he focus on?

In groups make notes on the following:
 * The Pike itself;
 * The world it inhabits;
 * The way the narrator reacts to the Pike.



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 * Links**

 [|http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/pike/comments.]

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