Poetry I

Read the following poem excerpt carefully:

*The shuttle flies, a swift and wooden bird,*
*To weave the silent landscape of the plain,*
*Where not a leaf by living wind is stirred,*
*Nor falls the shadow of a coming rain.*
*The quiet shepherd stands in wool suspended,*
*Beside a stream that has no voice to weep;*
*A peaceful world where nothing is amended,*
*And troubled souls might turn to them for sleep.*
*Yet look! The iron shears are raised to sever*
*The fragile warp that holds this painted grace;*
*The tapestry is rent and lost forever,*
*And empty air invades the quiet place.*
*The woven dream is scattered to the wind,*
*And cold winds blow where once the colors shined.*

In the poem, the tonal shift beginning in line 9 ('Yet look!...') functions primarily to do which of the following?

Read the following poem excerpt carefully:

(1) The kettle hums a low and steady song,
(2) Spitting small beads of steam into the air,
(3) While on the hearth, the logs, burning warm and strong,
(4) Cast golden shadows on the wooden chair;
(5) Outside, the silent frost begins to bite,
(6) Drawing its crystal lace across the night.

In lines 1–4, the sensory details of the humming kettle and the warm hearth-fire primarily serve to establish which of the following moods?

Read the following lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind" (1820) carefully:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

In the passage, the speaker’s use of apostrophe in directly addressing the wind primarily functions to do which of the following?

Read the following lines carefully:

The garden stands in silent, frozen grace,
Where winter lays its cold and heavy sheet;
No longer does the summer sun embrace
The path where busy, seeking roots would meet.
The withered petals sleep beneath the snow,
Secure from winds that whisper of decay,
And in their quiet slumber, softly know
A patient promise of a brighter day.

In line 5, the word 'sleep' most nearly connotes which of the following?

In the following poem:

The chisel bites the granite’s heavy breast,
Raising a cloud of sharp and chalky dust
That coats the tongue and settles on the hand,
While iron clangs against the silent block.
But as the blade reveals the hidden curve—
The cool, smooth contour of a sleeping wing—
The air grows sweet with scents of rain-washed grass,
And light, untethered, dances on the floor.

The sensory transition from the harsh, abrasive details of the opening to the soft, fresh imagery of the closing lines primarily functions to convey which of the following?

Read the following lines carefully:

The iron gate swings shut upon the lawn,
A heavy sentinel of rusted pride;
It locks the shadows of a day now gone,
And pushes back the rising, golden tide.
Within this gray enclosure, silent stone
Replaces all the wild and green array;
And columns stand like sentries, left alone,
To watch the slow and cold retreat of day.

In the second line, the word 'rusted' most directly connotes which of the following?

In Emily Dickinson's poem "I like to see it lap the Miles" (written c. 1862), the speaker describes the movement of a train:

I like to see it lap the Miles –
And lick the Valleys up –
And stop to feed itself at Tanks –
And then – prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains –
And supercilious peer
In Shacks – along the Road –

Which of the following best describes how the figurative comparison of the train to a living creature functions in these lines?

Read the following poem excerpt:

The ancient library was still and cold,
Where shadows clung to shelves of heavy oak,
And secrets of a century, untold,
Slept deep beneath a shroud of dust and smoke.
No living breath disturbed the silent air,
For time itself seemed frozen in the stone,
Until a sudden gust, a draft from where
The window stood, blew all the curtains prone—
And with the wind, a bright and golden leaf
Fell dancing on the dark and wooden floor,
Recalling life, and scattering the grief
Of all the dead years locked behind the door.

In the poem, the transition in line 7 ("Until a sudden gust...") primarily signals a shift from which of the following?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.

1 The brass-rimmed glass is turned toward the deep,
2 Where ancient constellations spin and fade,
3 And silent watchmen of the night-sky keep
4 A ledger of the light that time delayed.
5 How cold the calculations of the mind,
6 That measure beauty with a copper scale,
7 And in the fiery paths of stars can find
8 Only a math that grows remote and pale.
9 Yet look! The nebula begins to bloom,
10 A sudden rose of violet and gold,
11 Dispelling all the numbers and the gloom
12 With wonders that no ledger ever held;
13 And he who mapped the sky now stands in awe,
14 Forgetful of the grid and formal law.

The tonal shift initiated by the conjunction "Yet" in line 9 is best characterized as a transition from which of the following?

Read the following poem by Emily Dickinson (published in 1891) carefully:

(1) I’m Nobody! Who are you?
(2) Are you – Nobody – too?
(3) Then there’s a pair of us!
(4) Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

(5) How dreary – to be – Somebody!
(6) How public – like a Frog –
(7) To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
(8) To an admiring Bog!

Which of the following best describes the speaker's perspective on public recognition and social status?

Read the following passage from a poem carefully before choosing your answer.

The ancient calfskin binds the yellowed leaf,
A heavy tomb where silent hours sleep;
Each page a shallow monument to grief,
Where faded inks their solemn vigils keep.
5 The dust upon the gilded edge is deep,
A grey velour that speaks of slow decay,
And tells of secrets that the decades reap
Before they brush the memory away.

In line 4, the connotation of the word "vigils" primarily serves to emphasize which of the following?

Read the following excerpt from Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Darkling Thrush' (published in 1900) carefully:

(1) I leant upon a coppice gate
(2) When Frost was spectre-gray,
(3) And Winter's dregs made desolate
(4) The weakening eye of day.
(5) The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
(6) Like strings of broken lyres,
(7) And all mankind that haunted nigh
(8) Had sought their household fires.
(9) The land's sharp features seemed to be
(10) The Century's corpse outleant,
(11) His crypt the cloudy canopy,
(12) The wind his death-lament.
(13) The ancient pulse of germ and birth
(14) Was shrunken hard and dry,
(15) And every spirit upon earth
(16) Seemed fervourless as I.

Which of the following best describes the speaker’s relationship to the surrounding landscape in the excerpt?

Read the following lines carefully before choosing your answer.

The granite tower stands against the grey,
A stubborn tooth that bites the salt-flecked wind;
It marks the boundary of the fading day,
(4) And guides the fractured paths of those who sinned
Against the silent peril of the reef.
Its yellow eye, a steady, searching beam,
Offers a cold and mechanical relief
(8) To sailors caught between the wave and dream.

In line 7, the word "mechanical" most directly serves to

Read the following poem by William Wordsworth (published 1807) carefully before choosing your answer:

London, 1802

1 Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
2 England hath need of thee: she is a fen
3 Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
4 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
5 Have forfeited their ancient English dower
6 Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
7 Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
8 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
9 Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
10 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
11 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
12 So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
13 In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
14 The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

In lines 3-4, the speaker uses metonymy ("altar, sword, and pen, / Fireside") primarily to do which of the following?

Read the following poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818, carefully:

(1) I met a traveller from an antique land,
(2) Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
(3) Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
(4) Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
(5) And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
(6) Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
(7) Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
(8) The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
(9) And on the pedestal, these words appear:
(10) “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
(11) Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
(12) Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
(13) Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
(14) The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Which of the following best describes the effect of the nested narrative perspective (the speaker reporting the words of a traveler who describes the statue) on the poem's presentation of Ozymandias's empire?

Read the following poem by John Keats, published in 1816, carefully:

(1) Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
(2) And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
(3) Round many western islands have I been
(4) Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
(5) Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
(6) That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
(7) Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
(8) Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
(9) Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
(10) When a new planet swims into his ken;
(11) Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
(12) He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
(13) Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
(14) Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Which of the following best describes the development of the speaker's perspective from the first eight lines (lines 1–8) to the final six lines (lines 9–14) of the poem?

Read the following passage carefully before choosing your answer.

The silver plane lies flat against the wall,
A quiet pool that mimics every stride;
It drinks the amber twilight as it falls,
(4) And guards the ghosts of all who lived inside.
No ripples stir this cold, unblinking eye,
Which holds the parlor in a frozen grasp,
And watches, silent, as the hours go by,
(8) Like iron fingers on a golden clasp.

In line 4, the connotation of the word "guards" primarily serves to convey which of the following ideas about the mirror?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer:

The Glass Veranda

The pine-clean wind is barred by double glass,
Where row on row of narrow cots are laid
In clinical symmetry; we watch the seasons pass,
Immured in white, of our own breath afraid.
Down in the valley, charcoal chimneys choke
The bustling streets with soot and heavy steam,
But here, the mountain doctors would invoke
A colder cure, a silent, sterile dream.
They banish books, they quarantine our sighs,
And dose our lungs with pure, unyielding frost,
As if this clean, high altitude denies
The dark mortality the lowlands cost.

In the context of the poem, what is the primary thematic function of the contrast between the mountain veranda and the valley below?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing the best answer.

(1) The iron lever pulls its heavy sweep,
(2) Releasing smells of linseed, lead, and ink
(3) That hang like winter fog, too thick to drink.
(4) Across the stone, the rubber rollers creep
(5) In greasy silence, while the cold sheets sink
(6) Beneath the chase where locked-up letters keep
(7) Their silent guard. A sudden, metal clank
(8) Dispels the dampness of the basement air,
(9) And leaves a smudge of carbon on the cheek,
(10) A sharp, black stain of labor printed there.

In the poem, the sensory descriptions in lines 2–3 ("linseed, lead, and ink / That hang like winter fog") primarily serve to do which of the following?