2.7 Going Deeper (Exam Prep)

Real-world connections

The poem’s lesson is everywhere once you look. We praise the tall tree but trample the seedling; we admire the grand building but ignore the tiny sparrow’s nest in its wall. In our hurry, we often “stand on” the small good things — a friend’s quiet effort, a little act of kindness, a delicate plant on the path. Arkell’s joke is also a nudge: slow down, look down, and notice.

Quick revision card

Quick Revision Card

  • Poet: Reginald Arkell (1881–1959), British, known for humorous garden verse.
  • Form: a humorous narrative poem, 3 stanzas, rhyme AABBCC.
  • Setting: Mrs Jones’s stone-filled garden.
  • Plot: stone garden → tiny flowers “planted with a pin” → 15-minute chat → “You’re standing on it.”
  • Devices: rhyme, repetition (“My next-door neighbour, Mrs Jones”), alliteration (“next-door neighbour”), situational irony.
  • Theme: beauty and fragility of small things; gentle humour.
  • Moral: notice and protect small, delicate beauties.

Exam Corner

Objective / one-mark questions

  1. Who wrote A Concrete Example?
  2. What is Mrs Jones’s garden mainly made of?
  3. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?
  4. For how long did they discuss the flower?
  1. Reginald Arkell. 2. Stones. 3. AABBCC. 4. A quarter of an hour (fifteen minutes).

Short-answer questions (2–3 marks)

  1. Why does the speaker find Mrs Jones’s garden “crazy”?
  2. Explain the irony in the last two lines of the poem.
  3. What does the repeated opening line add to the poem?
  1. Because it is full of stones — a winding path, a lily pond, a rockery, and a strange sundial — which seems extreme and unusual to him, though Mrs Jones loves it.
  2. The speaker eagerly asks to see the lovely flower, only to be told he is standing on it. He was crushing the very beauty he wished to admire — the opposite of what he expected.
  3. It creates a playful, musical rhythm, links the three stanzas, and keeps the focus on Mrs Jones, setting up the final twist.

Long-answer questions (5–6 marks)

  1. How does the poet use humour and irony to convey a serious message?
  2. Describe Mrs Jones and her attitude to her garden, with examples from the poem.
  1. Humour builds through the odd stone garden and the “planted with a pin” exaggeration; irony peaks when the prized flower is found underfoot. The laughter delivers a serious point — we carelessly overlook and destroy small, fragile beauty. Wit carries wisdom.
  2. Mrs Jones is passionate, careful, and proud; she designs every detail (path, pond, rockery, sundial) and tends tiny flowers with great precision, even describing one for fifteen minutes. Her devotion is both admirable and gently comic.

HOTS (Higher-Order Thinking)

  1. The poem is titled A Concrete Example. In what way is the whole poem an “example” for the reader, not just a description of a garden?

The poem doesn’t just tell us to value small things — it shows us, through a concrete, real-life scene, how easily we ignore and destroy them. The speaker’s blunder becomes a living example, so the title points to the poem’s purpose: to give us a vivid case we won’t forget.

Assertion–Reason

  1. Assertion (A): The ending of the poem is humorous. Reason (R): The speaker discovers he has been standing on the flower he wished to see.

Choose: (a) Both A and R true and R explains A; (b) Both true but R does not explain A; (c) A true, R false; (d) A false, R true.

(a) Both statements are true, and R correctly explains why the ending is funny.

A note on the poet’s world

Did You Know? Reginald Arkell loved gardens so much that he wrote a famous comic novel, Old Herbaceous, about a devoted English gardener. His gentle, garden-loving humour is exactly what gives A Concrete Example its warm, smiling tone.