Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
My heart is but a clock of brass and steel,
Whose gears are wound by Hope’s persistent hand;
The wheels of habit turn the heavy wheel,
And measure hours we cannot understand.
But Love, the mainspring, is too tightly coiled,
And Pride, the regulator, rules too deep;
The delicate escapement has been soiled
By tears of grief that silent watchers weep.
No craftsman can adjust the balance spring,
Or oil the pivots where the friction lies;
It strikes the hour with a hollow ring,
Then falters in its ticking, and it dies.
For when the key of thy regard is lost,
The mechanism freezes in the frost.
Which of the following best describes how the speaker develops the conceit of the heart as a clockwork mechanism over the course of the poem?
- By transitioning from describing the structured, functional components of the heart to depicting its irreversible breakdown when a vital external influence is removed.Answer
- BBy treating the clock's individual gears and springs as separate, disconnected symbols of isolated emotions rather than part of a unified, developing system.
- CBy drawing directly on the poet’s personal experiences as an artisan to document the historical challenges of nineteenth-century clockmakers.
- DBy describing the literal layout of a clock shop to suggest that industrial settings are inherently destructive to human relationships.
- EBy cataloging the various instances of personification and metaphor in the mechanical descriptions to highlight the poem’s formal structure.