CHEETAH CHARLES EGLINGTON

THEMES
• APPEARANCES CAN BE MISLEADNG
• IN NATURE ONLY THE STRONGEST SURVIVE

• In the first part of the poem, the poet describes a young

cheetah lying relaxed in the long grass of the bushveld,
while a herd of buck grazed nearby.
• The big cat is waiting for darkness before hunger makes it
go out and hung. The chase is like a lottery, as the buck
do not know which one of them will be caught. (Cheetahs
knock their prey down, jump on it and then bite its neck
to kill it.)
 TYPE AND FORM
• Narrative poem that tells the story of how the cheetah
hunts its prey.
• The poem has a formal structure with seven stanzas of
four lines each (quatrains) that have a regular pattern of
rhyme (abab)

• Each of the seven stanzas tells a different part of the

story. Some stanzas focus on the cheetah, others on the
buck. In the last stanza, the two come together when the
cheetah catches a buck.
 STANZA 1
The words for baby animals like Metaphor – compares the cheetah’s big
‘kitten’ and ‘pup’ suggest it is young, eyes to those of a sweet kitten.
as teenage animals often seem to
have long, thin bodies before they
grow older, stronger and more
muscular.
Indolent and kitten-eyed, A harmless, young
This is the bushveld’s innocent animal

The stealthy leopard parodied

With grinning, gangling pup-
content.
Metaphor: compares
the cheetah to a
happy (and harmless)
It has long, loose legs that make it puppy.
seem rather awkward and clumsy.
 STANZA 2
Moves lazily and Alliteration: “l”
casually through the emphasising how
grass relaxed the animal is

Slouching through the tawny grass

The big cat purrs
like a happy house
Or loose-limbed lolling in the shade
cat as it waits Purring for the sun to pass
patiently for the
Metaphor: compares
sun to set (makes And build a twilight barricade
the cheetah seem the darkness to a
harmless) wall or barrier that
will hide the cheetah
when it hunts
 STANZA 3
The huge grasslands, the herds of buck that
are spread about as they graze and have no
idea that there is a cheetah nearby waiting
to kill one of them, it’s prey.
Around the vast arena where,
In scattered herds, his grazing prey
Do not suspect in what wild fear
They’ll join with him in fatal play;
Oxymoron: because
fatal play suggest a
The hunt is compared to a game that game, but ‘fata’
is played to the death. means deadly, so
this game will end in
death.
Simile: when an archer The animal changes from
gets ready to shoot the STANZA 4 a harmless-seeming
arrow, he pulls back the young animal into a
string of the bow very dangerous predator as it
tightly so that the arrow begins the chase.
will shoot forward with
great speed and power.
Till hunger draws slack sinews tight
As vibrant as a hunter’s bow; When the cheetah is
Simile: Then, like a fleck of mottled light, hungry and ready to
describes the hunt, it tenses all
He slides across the still plateau.
cheetah’s the muscles in it’s
speed, as its body.
spotted body
moves as
Alliteration: hissing ‘s’ sound emphasises its
fast as a
speed
flashing spot
of light
The buck catches the strong scent
of the cheetah, the shiver with fear. STANZA 5
Metaphor: describes the way the
shiver of fear run through the herd
the way a rake can sweep along the
ground

A tremor rakes the herds: they scent

The pungent breeze of his advance;
Heads rear and jerk in vigilant
Compliance with the game of chance.

Metaphor: the poet compares the buck to people taking part in a ‘game of
chance’. They have to fit in with the rules of the ‘game’. Unfortunately for the
buck the rules of nature are that some animals have to die so that others can
survive.
 The rhyming of these two
STANZA 6 words links them to
emphasise that the buck has
no chance of escape. The
buck is in the cheetah’s sight.

In which, of thousands, only one

Is centred in the cheetah’s eye;
They wheel and then stampede, for none
Knows which it is that has to die.

When herd animals are afraid they stampede – the whole herd runs
away in a mass panic. Their movement is uncontrolled. They know
that one of them will die, but do not know which of them the cheetah
has chosen to kill.
 STANZA 7
The silent speed with which the cheetah runs towards the buck
is compared to the rope and noose flying through the air.

His stealth and swiftness fling a noose

The cheetah’s
And as his loping strides begin long steps
To blur with speed, he ropes the loose begin to go so
fast that you
Buck on the red horizon in. cannot see
the animal
The red could refer to the setting sun but it also clearly; you
suggests that the land itself is stained with the can only see
blood of the dead buck. a blur