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Question

Difficulty: HardStructural Forms and Lineation

Read the following lines from William Butler Yeats's poem "No Second Troy" (1910):

What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?

In lines 3–4 of the excerpt ("a kind / That is not natural"), the enjambment between the lines primarily serves to do which of the following?

  1. momentarily isolate the phrase "a kind" to highlight the speaker's struggle to classify the woman's beauty before defining it as something alien to the modern eraAnswer
  2. B
    create a definitive grammatical pause at the end of the line, establishing that the woman possesses a gentle and affectionate disposition
  3. C
    employ enjambment to disrupt the iambic pentameter, demonstrating the poet's skill in using formal variations to maintain reader interest
  4. D
    signal a dramatic shift in the speaker's tone from bitter resentment to a state of calm acceptance and romantic adoration
  5. E
    reflect the poet's personal biographical frustration with Maud Gonne's political activism in early twentieth-century Ireland

Answer

momentarily isolate the phrase "a kind" to highlight the speaker's struggle to classify the woman's beauty before defining it as something alien to the modern era
The correct option is the one stating that the enjambment momentarily isolates "a kind" to highlight the speaker's struggle to classify the woman's beauty before defining it as something alien to the modern era. The line break after "a kind" forces a momentary pause on a word that denotes classification (a type or category). This pause emphasizes the speaker's attempt to categorize her, which is immediately followed in the next line by the qualification that she is "not natural in an age like this"—thereby emphasizing her unique, mythic, and archaic nature.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Read the selected lines and trace the grammatical structure across the line break.
The phrase "a kind" at the end of the third line is enjambed, continuing into "That is not natural" in the fourth line.
This establishes that the line break does not mark a punctuation stop but rather forces the reader to look forward to the next line to complete the thought.
2
Analyze the semantic meaning of the words involved in the line break.
The word "kind" acts as a noun meaning a category, class, or type, rather than an adjective meaning caring or gentle.
Understanding the part of speech prevents the misinterpretation that the speaker is describing the woman as gentle.
3
Connect the lineation choice to the thematic meaning of the passage.
By pausing briefly on "a kind" before revealing she is "not natural" in the modern age, the enjambment heightens the suspense and highlights the speaker's difficulty in finding a modern category for her archaic, heroic beauty.
This explains the specific literary and thematic effect of the enjambment, aligning with the correct interpretation.

Key Concept

Analyzing how enjambment and line breaks shape meaning and tone by creating structural pauses or continuous syntax across lines.
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Topics

Structural Forms and Lineation

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