Allusions in Poetry
16 questions
Read the following poem by William Wordsworth (1770–1850) carefully before choosing your answer:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordord boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
The allusion to the mythological figures Proteus and Triton in lines 13–14 primarily serves to achieve which of the following effects?
Read the poem below carefully:
The World Is Too Much with Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
In the final two lines of the poem, what function do the mythological allusions to Proteus and Triton serve?
Read the following poem by Robert Frost (1874–1963) carefully:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
(5) Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
In the poem, how does the allusion to "Eden" in line 6 function in relation to the poem's central theme?
Read the following excerpt from John Milton’s sonnet "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (1673) carefully:
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide...
In the context of the excerpt, which of the following best describes the function of the allusion to the "one talent" in line 3?
Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.
The Sculptor's Clay
He shapes the cold white stone with frantic hand,
Demanding breath from what his chisel made,
As if a mortal gesture could command
The stubborn marble in the studio's shade.
No warming pulse responds to his embrace,
No ivory flesh begins to flush or glow;
He stands a failed Pygmalion in this place,
Bound to the silence of the stone below.
In the context of the poem, how does the allusion to Pygmalion in line 7 function to develop the speaker's portrayal of the sculptor?
Read the following excerpt from John Keats’s poem "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819) carefully:
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
In the context of the poem, how does the speaker’s allusion to the biblical figure of Ruth (lines 5–7) contribute to the development of the poem's theme?
Read the following excerpt from Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New Colossus" (1883) carefully:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
In the excerpt, which of the following best describes the primary function of the speaker’s allusion to "the brazen giant of Greek fame" (line 1)?
Read the following simulated poem carefully:
The Watcher at Ithaca
The loom is silent in the dusty hall,
The tapestry half-woven, green and gold,
Where once she sang of Ilium’s final fall
And watched the graying web of life unfold.
No traveler knocks, no suitors dare to tread
Upon the cold stone where the shadow creeps;
She unravels every night the silent thread,
While under foreign stars her shepherd sleeps.
Thus does she mock the swift, relentless loom,
And by her stalling hand, stave off the crown,
Transforming patient waiting to a doom
More bitter than the towers burning down.
In the context of the poem, the allusion to the mythological figure who "unravels every night the silent thread" primarily functions to do which of the following?
Read the poem below carefully:
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
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?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
In the context of the poem as a whole, the allusion to Troy in the final line ('Was there another Troy for her to burn?') serves to achieve which of the following effects?
Read the following passage from T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915):
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
In the first line of the passage, the speaker's allusion to Prince Hamlet serves primarily to highlight which aspect of the speaker's character?
Read the following poem carefully:
The Prophet in the Marketplace
We watched her stand beside the granite sill,
Crying of fires no other eye could trace,
While commerce hummed and wagons climbed the hill,
And shadows lengthened on the market square.
We bartered wool and weighed the common gold,
Deaf to the rising wind that swept the bay,
And laughed to hear the frantic threat she told
Of towers fallen in a single day.
Like her who walked the wrecked and smoking street
Of Priam's town, she speaks to ears of stone,
Her truth a coin that buys no safe retreat,
Her vision left to burn and fade alone.
In the third stanza, the allusion to 'her who walked the wrecked and smoking street / Of Priam's town' primarily serves to do which of the following?
Carefully read the subsequent passage from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867) prior to selecting your response:
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
[5] At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
[10] Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
How does the speaker's allusion to Sophocles in lines 9–14 function within the context of the poem's theme?
Read the following poem by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) carefully:
To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
In the second stanza, the speaker's allusion to 'Naiad airs' (line 8) functions primarily to do which of the following?
Read the following poem, 'The Desk-Bound Giant' (2024), carefully:
The clock strikes eight, and once again he stands
Before the desk of spreadsheets and of files,
To push the heavy stone with weary hands,
Across the screen in dry, endless miles.
Though no peak crowns this corporate, daily climb,
Like Sisyphus he starts the task anew,
A silent captive of the clockwork time,
Under the fluorescent ceiling's hue.
In the context of the poem, which of the following best describes the function of the allusion to Sisyphus?
Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer:
Each evening, she returns to sweep the floor
And stack the dusty volumes on the shelf,
As if the simple closure of the door
Could keep the world from finding out itself.
She seeks the draught that silent Lethe yields,
To wash the crowded streets from out her head,
And walk in memory through those silent fields
Where no unbidden words are ever said.
Yet every dawn the heavy waters clear,
The tide of memory rushes back again;
The quiet room becomes a theater
For all the waking world’s persistent pain.
In the second stanza, how does the allusion to "Lethe" function to develop the theme of the poem?
Read the following poem by William Butler Yeats (1865��1939) carefully:
No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
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?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Which of the following best describes the function of the allusion to Troy in the final line of the poem?