Poetry I

Read the following poem carefully:

1 The silver drops descend upon the leaves,
2 A sudden wash of music on the lawn;
3 The thirsty earth receives the gift, and breathes
4 A scent of mossy soil before the dawn.
5 How beautiful the shining grass appears,
6 Bathed in the liquid light of early spring,
7 As if the morning shed its quiet tears
8 To make the sleeping valley wake and sing.
9 I stand beneath the canopy and smile,
10 Content to watch the storm and rest awhile.

Which of the following best describes the speaker’s tone in the poem?

Read the following passage from John Donne's "Holy Sonnet 14" (published 1633) carefully before choosing your answer.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

In the context of the passage, how does the personification of Reason as God's "viceroy" function to develop the speaker's internal conflict?

Read the following passage from William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (1807) carefully before choosing your answer:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. (6)

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. (12)

In lines 11-12 ("Ten thousand... dance"), how do the figurative devices of hyperbole and personification primarily function to develop the speaker's perspective?

Read the following passage from William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73" (published in 1609) carefully before choosing your answer.

(1) That time of year thou mayst in me behold
(2) When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
(3) Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
(4) Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
(5) In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
(6) As after sunset fadeth in the west,
(7) Which by and by black night doth take away,
(8) Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
(9) In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
(10) That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
(11) As the death-bed whereon it must expire
(12) Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
(13) This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
(14) To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In the third quatrain (lines 9–12), the speaker compares his state to a dying fire that is "Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by." How does this figurative language contribute to the development of the speaker's reflection on aging?

Read the following excerpt from a poem:

The garden wall still holds the winter’s frost,
A calcified design of ancient stone,
Where every trace of summer’s leaf is lost,
And we walk quiet, structured, and alone.
We praise the order of this frozen space,
The clean geometry of branch and vine,
No wild excesses of a green embrace,
No blurred frontiers along the strict design.
Yet look—where shadow cuts the northern sill,
A single drop of melted water falls,
A slow, defiant pulse against the still
And silent masonry of these high walls;
It is not spring, but something in the beat
Of that small water mocks our cold retreat.

How does the contrast introduced in line 9 ("Yet look...") function in relation to the speaker's initial attitude toward the frozen garden?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.

London, Late November

The iron teeth of looms devour the day, (Line 1)
And spit out threads of uniform, dull gray; (Line 2)
While high above the brick-bound, smoky yard, (Line 3)
The sun is but a copper coin, pressed hard (Line 4)
Against the soot-washed canvas of the sky. (Line 5)
No thrushes sing, no wandering breezes sigh (Line 6)
Within these walls where steam-born giants roar, (Line 7)
And shake the boards of this low-ceilinged floor. (Line 8)
Here time is measured not by shadow's crawl, (Line 9)
But by the bell that commands us one and all, (Line 10)
Binding our hands to wheels of spinning brass, (Line 11)
Until the youthful green of fields must pass (Line 12)
To distant dreams, and we ourselves become (Line 13)
But cogs that move, obedient and numb. (Line 14)

In lines 9–11 ('Here time... spinning brass'), how does the description of the setting reflect the historical shift from agrarian life to industrialization?

Read the following poem excerpt carefully:

*The Iron Weft*

The valley, once a green and quiet cup
Where morning poured her golden vapors up,
Now runs with rivers of a darker stain,
And breaths of soot that blot the autumn rain.
Above the roofs, the brick chimneys rise,
Like soot-black fingers pointing to the skies,
Accusing heaven of the altered soil.
Below, the clack of looms, the hum of toil,
Reforms the ancient rhythm of the day;
No longer governed by the sun’s soft ray,
But by the iron clock's unswerving chime,
Which slices silence into measured time.
Here, in the shadow of the smoking mill,
The children of the valley labor still.

In the poem, how does the shift from the natural landscape to the mechanized setting of the mill town function contextually and thematically?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.

We built our walls of well-cut, silent stone,
And laid the mortar thick against the wind,
Content to keep the wild, untamed unknown
From creeping through the borders we designed.
(5) No shadow crossed the threshold of the floor
That was not measured by the rafters' span;
We locked the latch, we bolted fast the door,
And lived within the grid of ordered man.
Yet stones will breathe, and mortar has a tongue
(10) That whispers to the grass beneath the clay;
The iron bolt, though resolutely swung,
Cannot forbid the quiet, green decay
That enters through the cracks we did not choose,
To win the battles we were glad to lose.

How does the structural transition between the octave (lines 1–8) and the sestet (lines 9–14) develop the speaker's perspective?

Read the following poem excerpt:

The clockwork click of teacups in the hall
Secures the morning in a porcelain frame;
We talk of politics, we watch the fall
Of autumn leaves that whisper of a name.
The room is warm, the curtains tightly drawn
Against the wind that searches for the dawn.

And yet, beneath the rug, the floorboards sigh
With weight of generations long since dust;
A colder draft, a sudden, wordless cry
Invades our sanctuary of polite distrust.
The gilded cups remain, but they are cold,
And all our quiet lives feel suddenly old.

In the second stanza, how does the tonal shift initiated by the phrase 'And yet' function to alter the meaning of the domestic setting?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing the best answer.

The Alchemist's Winter

The hearth-fire dies in gray, calcareous ash, (line 1)
A velvet hush that seals the furnace door; (line 2)
Where once the sulfur flared in golden flash, (line 3)
Now frozen silence pools upon the floor. (line 4)
No clang of iron rings against the grate, (line 5)
Nor rising steam of vinegar and lead; (line 6)
Only the bitter frost, importunate, (line 7)
That numbs the fingers of the waking dead. (line 8)
Yet in this chill, a sudden, blinding white— (line 9)
A sudden scent of pine and burning pitch— (line 10)
Invades the dark, a sharp and searing light (line 11)
That makes the cold, exhausted senses itch: (line 12)
Not gold, but life, in silver needles spun, (line 13)
Reclaims the crucible beneath the sun. (line 14)

In the poem, the sensory transition in lines 9–12 ("Yet... itch") primarily functions to do which of the following?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer:

We crossed the salt-flats when the wind was down,
Bearing our shallow jars of oil and grain,
Leaving the dry bones of the lower town
To catch the first cold needles of the rain.
No standard marked our progress, nor did word
Escape the iron circle of our ranks;
Above us wheeled a solitary bird
Whose shadow fell like grease upon the banks.
You called it triumph, that we reached the gate
Before the torches guttered in the frost,
Yet in the silence of the watch-tower's grate,
We could not name the thing we had not lost.
A clean cold wind blew through the empty hall;
We stood like statues, waiting for the fall.

Which of the following best describes the shift in the speaker's attitude over the course of the poem?

1 The tides return like debt, persistent, cold,
2 To scrape the limestone teeth of this old bay.
3 We stood to watch the grey-winged gulls unfold
4 Their dry, salt-crusted arguments to day,
5 And deemed their shrill, repetitive dispute
6 A fitting anthem for our quiet ground.
7 But look: the water-logged and heavy root
8 Of some drowned willow, by the current bound,
9 Stirs in the silt—not rising, but upright,
10 As if a hand beneath the blackening froth
11 Reached for the fading residue of light
12 To pull the sky down like a woollen cloth.
13 How suddenly the steady water mocks
14 The small security of solid rocks.

Which of the following best describes the transition in tone and mood that occurs after line 6?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing the best answer.

The sunset builds a gilded cage of air,
Where light, like molten brass, begins to freeze,
Refining all the shadows to a stare
Of copper columns in the quiet trees.
We trace the formal paths that we have made,
And marvel at the salvage of the day—
As if the cold geometry of shade
Could keep the wild, unreckoned night at bay.

In the context of the poem, the speaker’s use of the word "salvage" (line 6) to describe what remains of the day primarily connotes which of the following?

Read the following poem:

The ink-line traces out the granite shelf,
Strict as a ledger, mapping tree and stone,
Dissecting all the valley for itself,
Until the wilderness is categorized and known.
No leaf escapes the stylus; every peak
Submits its height in feet above the sea,
And in this grid, the silent and the meek
Resign their borders to geometry.
Yet where the stream is marked by double blue,
A sudden smudge of red begins to bleed—
The memory of a hearth the surveyor knew,
Before the chart outgrew the human need.
Here, coordinates dissolve in rising mist,
And what was measured turns to what is missed.

The speaker’s attitude undergoes a transition from which of the following?

The Garden Plot

I.
The gardener maps the wilderness in squares,
And trims the boxwood borders with his shears;
No straying blossom or wild weed declares
A mutiny against the plan he clears.
Each row conforms, each path is swept and neat,
A testament to order and to grace;
The wild is vanquished, brought to its defeat,
Confined within this designated space.

II.
Yet where the neat hedge ends, the weeds begin
To push their roots beneath the gravel stone;
A silent, slow rebellion from within,
Reclaiming what the garden claimed to own.
The soil remembers what the shears forgot:
That growth is wild, and will not brook the plot.

In the poem, how does the stanzaic division between section I and section II function in relation to the poem's thematic development?

Consider the following poem:

No breath disturbs the silent, heavy stone,
Where grandeur sits upon a frozen throne;
Yet through the cracks of this majestic state,
Creeps the slow moss, a green and patient weight,
Subverting all the sculptor’s proud design,
With the soft ruin of a living line.

In the context of the poem, the word 'patient' (line 4) most directly connotes which quality of the moss?

Consider the following poem:

*The iron towers lean against the dusk,*
*Their shadows stretching long across the quay,*
*Where yellow gas-lamps burn away the musk*
*Of salt and tar that drifted from the sea.*

*A clerk goes by with collar turned to cold,*
*His boots repeating rhythms on the stone,*
*While in the market, winter fruit is sold*
*To silent men who walk their paths alone.*

*But watch the sparks that catch the passing train,*
*A sudden gold against the slate-grey sky;*
*They flare and die, indifferent to the rain,*
*Like hopes we gather just to watch them fly.*

*The heavy engines pant, then slip away,*
*And leave the night more quiet than the day.*

Which of the following best describes the development of the speaker's tone over the course of the poem?

Read the passage below:

1 The grate is cold, the ash is grey and deep,
2 Where once the crimson embers used to leap
3 And cast a ruddy warmth upon the floor.
4 The winter wind beats hollow at the door,
5 A guest unbidden, whispering of the snow,
6 And mocking songs we gathered long ago.
7 Yet in the iron box upon the stand,
8 Forged by some long-forgotten craftsman’s hand,
9 The small brass gears begin their ancient chime,
10 A sudden, golden melody of time
11 That floods the silent room with summer light,
12 Defying both the winter and the night.

Which of the following best describes the shift in tone between the first half of the poem (lines 1-6) and the second half (lines 7-12)?

Read the following passage from Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem (published posth. 1557) carefully:

(1) Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
(2) But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
(3) The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
(4) I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
(5) Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
(6) Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
(7) Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
(8) Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

In lines 5–7 ('Yet may . . . follow'), the speaker’s perspective is best characterized as which of the following?

Read the following poem excerpt carefully:

Midwinter Transit

The train moves north, a heavy iron thread
Slicing the frozen fabric of the plain,
Where houses cluster like the huddled dead,
And trees, stripped bare, stand stiffly in the rain.

But here inside, the steady hum of wheels
Creates a shelter from the bitter cold;
The passenger, in quiet comfort, feels
A peace that is too delicate to hold.

For speed increases, and the window glass
Reflects a world that starts to blur and fade;
We do not watch the winter landscape pass;
We watch the ghost of our own image made.

In the poem, the transition from the first stanza to the second stanza primarily serves to do which of the following?