Lesson #106: Mini-lesson Monday (Part 1): Reading ‘The Fawn’

Learn English Through Literature

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

Mini-lesson Monday! (part 1)

I would like to share with you the opening lines of one of my favourite poems: ‘The Fawn’ by American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950).

‘There it was I saw what I shall never forget
And never retrieve.
Monstrous and beautiful to human eyes, hard to
believe,
He lay, yet there he lay,
Asleep on the moss, his head on his polished cleft
small ebony hoves,
The child of the doe, the dappled child of the deer …’

– Edna St Vincent Millay, ‘The Fawn’

The simplicity of its language and the depth of its reflection and feeling are something I love.

The poem’s simplicity makes it suitable for English learners of all levels to read and enjoy!

I will demonstrate in the next post how I approached it in a lesson about English comprehension.

by J. E. Gibbons

English language tutor and researcher at 'Learn English Through Literature' (2024)