Poetry III
130 questions
Read the poem carefully:
The Glasshouse and the Gale
Within the dome, the orchid breathes in steam,
A hothouse captive in a humid dream,
Where iron ribs keep back the freezing night
And paint the floor with grids of leaden light.
Here, petal-soft, the summer is preserved,
In static arches, catalogued and curved.
But just beyond the glass, the dark spruce bends,
And through the dark, the north wind tears and rends;
No glass protects the needle from the frost,
No climate-keeper counts the blossoms lost.
The wild hill sleeps beneath a shroud of white,
Unkept, unruled, yet sovereign in its might.
The juxtaposition between the controlled interior of the glasshouse (lines 1–6) and the untamed exterior environment (lines 7–12) primarily serves to do which of the following?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Loom of Noons
I set the shuttle to the heavy beam
And weave the grid of silver, line by line,
To shape a world of order and design,
And quiet those who wait outside the scheme.
5 But when the shadows lengthen on the floor,
I pull the threads apart with eager hands;
No ancient vessel nears these quiet sands,
No phantom hero knocks upon the door.
This nightly unraveling is not to wait
10 For some returning king to claim his right,
But to dismantle what is made by day,
And rule, in secret, the untangled night.
In the final stanza (lines 9–12), the speaker’s subversion of the Penelope myth primarily serves to do which of the following?
Read the following poem by Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), published in 1900:
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervidless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
In the poem, how does the transition from the speaker's meditation on the dead landscape (stanzas 1-2) to the thrush's song (stanzas 3-4) develop the poem's thematic argument?
Read the following poem carefully:
The Dial and the Shadow
The brass plate counts the hours in gilded strokes,
A sun-bound ruler of the garden's oaks;
It measures light with cold, geometric grace,
And pins the morning to a numbered face.
No straying beam escapes the copper line,
Bound to the wheel of permanent design.
Yet underneath the stone, the mosses creep,
In silent hours when the numerals sleep;
They swell in dampness, greening in the dark,
Undoing all the builder’s rigid mark,
And tell of time that does not watch the sun,
But flows where root and ancient soil are one.
The juxtaposition of the sundial's "cold, geometric grace" (line 3) and the mosses' "silent hours" (line 8) primarily serves to
Read the following excerpt from Andrew Marvell's seventeenth-century poem "The Definition of Love" carefully before choosing your answer:
Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.
As Lines, so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.
In the second and third stanzas of the excerpt, the speaker develops a geometric conceit comparing the lovers to parallel lines. Which of the following best describes the thematic function of this conceit in the context of the poem's overall argument?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Lighthouse Keeper's Ledger
I log the wind, I count the rising tide,
And watch the ships that safely pass us by;
Within this granite tower I abide,
Beneath a cold and indifferent sky.
They think me lonely in my quiet routine,
Sweeping the lens and polishing the glass,
But in this steady, solitary scene,
I find a peace that nothing can surpass.
Based on the poem, the speaker's attitude toward their solitary life in the lighthouse is best described as which of the following?
Read the following poem by Robert Frost carefully before choosing your answer:
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loose to all
Of ties of love and duty bondage-like,
Kept by a silky-gentle band in thrall
A pressure of she knows not what constraint,
And only by one going slightly taut
In the wind of havoc destined to be caught.
Which of the following best describes the primary function of the extended metaphor of the silken tent?
Read the following poem by Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), published in 1861:
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
In the poem, how does the dialogic structure—the alternating pattern of questioning and response—contribute to the development of the poem's thematic argument regarding the human journey?
Read the following sixteenth-century poem by Edmund Spenser carefully before choosing your answer:
Like as a ship, that through the ocean wide,
By conduct of some star, doth make her way,
Whenas a storm hath dimmed her trusty guide,
Out of her course doth wander far astray;
So I, whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with clouds is overcast,
Do wander now, in darkness and dismay,
Through hidden rocks and dangers inly cast:
Yet hope I well that, when this storm is past,
My Helice, the lodestar of my life,
Will shine again, and look on me at last,
With lovely light to clear my cloudy grief:
Till then I wander careful, comfortless,
In secret sorrow, and sad pensiveness.
In the context of the poem's extended metaphor, which of the following best describes the function of the shift in the speaker's relationship to the 'star' in lines 9–12 ('Yet hope I well... cloudy grief')?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Return
They called me back into the stinging light,
Unwinding linen from my stiffened clay,
And cheered the miracle that broke the night,
As if the dark were some malignant way.
But in that quiet vault, no shadows crept;
The silence was a cool, unbroken shield.
I did not dream, nor wish, but simply slept,
A crop forgotten in a winter field.
Now, bound again to breath and heavy bone,
I watch their celebration from afar,
And mourn the peace I gathered all alone,
Dragged back to carry this unwelcome star.
In the poem, how does the speaker’s allusion to a biblical resurrection (suggested by the "linen" and "miracle" in lines 2 and 3) function to subvert traditional expectations of rebirth?
The Botanist's Herbarium
Here lie the victims of my neat arrest,
Each leaf pressed flat, each petal dried to stone,
Their wildness conquered, catalogued, and dressed
In tidy ink on cards of heavy bone.
I called it science when I clipped the stem
And held the living green against the light,
Believing I did honor unto them
By rescuing their colors from the night.
Yet looking at this pale, silent parade,
I see no triumphs in my quiet room;
I am a jailer in a house of shade,
Who traded summer for a sterile bloom.
In the poem above, which of the following best describes how the speaker's tone and perspective shift from the first two stanzas to the final stanza?
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?
Read the following seventeenth-century poem, 'The Pulley' by George Herbert, carefully before choosing your answer:
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
'Let us,' said he, 'pour on him all we can.
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.'
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
'For if I should,' said he,
'Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.
'Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.'
Which of the following best describes how the speaker uses the conceit of the 'glass of blessings' and the withholding of 'rest' to characterize the relationship between God and humanity?
Read the poem "The Pulley" (1633) by George Herbert:
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can:
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span."
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
"For if I should," said he,
"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.
"Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast."
Which of the following best describes how the transition between the second and third stanzas develops the poem's thematic argument?
Read the following poem carefully, then answer the question.
The Map and the Moor
The ink-drawn lines upon the parchment square
Confine the heathered valley to a grid,
And lock the wild, unpredictable air
Within the boundaries where the draftsman did
Affix his compass and his steady scale.
No wind can rattle through this paper glen,
No sudden rain can soak the printed trail,
Or blur the borders of the ink-drawn fen.
Yet just beyond the window's heavy frame,
The purple moorland stretches wild and deep,
Untouched by boundary, untamed by name,
Where lawless storms across the ridges sweep;
There, unmapped currents bend the bending grass,
And shadows run where surveyors cannot pass.
In the poem, how does the structural transition between the first and second stanzas serve to develop a central theme?
Read the following poem carefully.
Naxos
The thread I wound to lead him through the dark
Lies tangled now upon this sun-bleached stone,
A crimson line that leaves no lasting mark
On tides that claim the shore and me alone.
They praise the hero's sail that catches wind,
The clever blade that sheared the monster's thread,
Yet in this quiet bay, the fears designed
By architects of stone are finally dead.
No labyrinth remains to map my pace;
The minotaur was but a shadow cast.
I watch the sails dissolve in empty space,
Escaped from both the savior and the past.
In the poem, the speaker's use of allusions to the labyrinth and the thread primarily functions to do which of the following?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Threshold
We walked the narrow path of frozen lime,
The quiet shade of pines ahead;
I did not mean to challenge time,
Or doubt the promise of the dead.
But in the silence of the rise,
Where light first touched the upper air,
I turned to find your fading eyes,
And saw the shadow take you there.
In the second stanza, the speaker’s allusion to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice ('I turned to find... And saw the shadow take you there') primarily serves to do which of the following?
Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.
The Copper Kettle
Upon the iron range it sits and sighs,
A tarnished bell that tolls the morning in,
Reflecting in its belly’s rounded rise
The kitchen hearth, the quiet household din.
For years it gathered fire and turned it sweet, (5)
A domesticate of steam and copper skin,
But now, with bottom scorched by soot and heat,
It leaks a slow, cold tear upon the tin.
The water will not boil; the flame is low,
And green oxidation spreads its silent lace, (10)
A creeping moss of negligence and woe
That seals the vessel in a cold embrace.
Where once the steam sang high, a silver bird,
A heavy, rusted silence now is heard.
In the poem, how does the symbolic significance of the kettle shift over the course of the text?
Read the following lines from Claude McKay’s poem "America," first published in 1921:
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
In the stanza above, the enjambment between the third and fourth lines ("confess / I love") primarily serves to do which of the following?
Read the following poem by Claude McKay (1889–1948), published in 1921:
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood,
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
In the poem, how does the shift in the final four lines (lines 11–14) contribute to the development of the speaker's thematic argument regarding America?