Meg Rutherford: The Beautiful Island

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My favorite book, Meg Rutherford’s The Beautiful Island (1969), has been filmed as a video. Can you sight-read it as the text pops up?


Language points:

  • isle – island
  • memorials – memory – memorable, memorize / remember
  • towers, cathedrals, palaces, church
  • lone – lonely – alone
  • crippled – cripple – crippling
  • enchantment – enchanting – enchantingly / chant
  • courage – courageous – courageously
  • contentment – content – contentedly
  • excitement – excited – excitedly
  • windswept gorges – the wind swept across the gorges
  • sun-beaten deserts – the sun beat down on the desert
  • the sun-weary = those who are weary of the sun
  • passives:
    to mislay, to be mislaid
    to strew, to become strewn
  • to linger and rest
  • alliteration:
    drifted down
    wind whipped the waves
    cool caverns
    the sea became strewn
  • alas! (literary exclamation)
    at last (more literary than ‘finally’)
  • some crossed by tunnel and some crossed by balloon (ellipsis)
  • rhythmic meter = anapaest: till they came one by one
  • Beautiful Island (capitalization of proper nouns)
  • word partnership: bowers for lovers – lovers’ bower
  • shade vs. shadow

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