Ghada
can you please help me! what grammar tense/aspect is used in this poem? im confused Hello! can you please help me... I want to know what tense the poet used in this poem, i am kind of confused.. did she use more than one tense/aspect or just one? and what is the tense? I NEVER saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given.
Apr 25, 2015 6:35 PM
Answers · 3
2
Grammarians say tense is time in language . In English , we have two tense forms : past and present. For teaching purposes, some teachers tell their students that there are three tenses: past , present and future. However, this is not really true. Anyway, Aspect is defined as " how the action happened" or " how the speaker/writer describes the action : simple , progressive (continuous) , perfect and progressive. e.g. I wrote a letter . The tense here is past.The aspect is simple .It indicates an action which happened in the past and finished. I was writing a letter . Tense is past . Aspect is continuous. It shows that the action was continuous when I reported the action . As for the poem , I think there two tenses : past and present and the aspect is simple but you have active and passive voice forms in some verb phrases. Past tense verbs show the poet's experience about the world . Whereas, the present show the facts about our world.
April 25, 2015
2
There's a little bit of inversion for poetic purposes. If you speak the words aloud, you'll hear that the poem has a strong rhythm. The last line is past subjunctive: "as if it were..."
April 25, 2015
1
When the poet uses "never" the tense is simple past, for poetic purposes, but you can imagine using "have never seen" for example instead (present perfect). The other parts are simple present. Except for the last line which is past tense passive voice.
April 25, 2015
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