Poetry III
130 questions
Read Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" (1818):
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Which of the following best describes how the juxtaposition between the inscription on the pedestal and the surrounding landscape contributes to the poem's thematic argument?
Read the poem carefully, then answer the question.
The Hearth and the Hillside
Within the stone-built room, the embers glow,
Casting a crimson warmth on polished wood;
Here, sheltered from the world’s unresting woe,
The quiet hours are softly understood.
But past the frost-etched pane, the hillside stark
Meets the raw fury of the northern gale,
Where twisted pines stand frozen in the dark,
And shadows wrestle in a snowy veil.
The hearth sings low, a humming bird of fire,
Confined to bricks and fed on seasoned oak;
Out there, the wind-swept heights have no desire
For comfort, wearing only winter's cloak.
The threshold holds them both—a fragile seam
Between the quiet sleep and waking scream.
In the poem, how does the structural juxtaposition of the interior hearth and the exterior hillside contribute to the development of the speaker's perspective?
Read the following poem carefully.
The Clockmaker's Apology
Here, in the coppered twilight of the shop,
I teach the stubborn gears to hold their breath,
To divide the infinite flow, and make it stop
In neat, repeating intervals of death.
My patrons buy this gold-cased symmetry,
Believing they have bought the master's soul;
They wind the spring and watch the hands agree,
Content to keep the fragments of the whole.
Yet when the chime rings out its precise knell,
I do not hear the triumph of my art,
But the slow cracking of a hollow shell
That marks the pulse of a mechanical heart.
They think I rule the hours from my throne;
I only carve the cage that locks my own.
Which of the following best describes the development of the speaker's tone over the course of the poem?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The World Is Too Much With Us (1807)
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 wreathèd horn.
Which of the following best describes the development of the speaker's voice over the course of the poem?
Read the following poem by Thomas Hardy carefully before answering the question.
The Man He Killed (1902)
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
"I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
"He thought he'd list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps ���
No other reason why.
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."
In the third and fourth stanzas ("I shot him... reason why"), how do the speaker's hesitant syntax and self-correction shape the poem's tone and voice?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Glassblower’s Breath
I gather the fire on the iron rod,
A heavy drop of liquid sun,
And breathe a bubble, thin and wide,
To frame the light when day is done.
They call it art, this burning sweat,
This shaping of a fragile dome;
But I see only sand and heat
Constraining what was wild and free.
Yet when the cooling crystal clears,
And rings beneath the hammer’s blow,
I hear the echo of the years
I poured into the furnace glow.
Which of the following best describes the shift in the speaker's tone over the course of the poem?
Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.
The Alabaster Quarry
We carved the silent white from underground,
Deep in the hill where no bird ever sang,
And shaped the block before the hammer rang
With any echo of a human sound.
But now the statue in the public square,
Greyed by the soot of twenty smoky years,
Weeps only black and slow-descending tears
Into the coldness of the winter air.
The marble that was virgin in the dark
Forgets the quiet of its mountain home,
And stands a beacon for the gathering storm,
Marking the city with a fractured scar.
Over the course of the poem, how does the symbolic significance of the marble shift?
Read the following excerpt from George Herbert's poem "The Collar" (1633) carefully:
I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
5 Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
10 Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
15 No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?"
The series of rhetorical questions in lines 6��16 ("Shall I... wasted?") contributes to the speaker's persona by doing which of the following?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Weather Vane
The iron rooster stands atop the spire, (1)
Fixed to his narrow perch above the town,
He does not fly to satisfy desire,
Nor seek the gilded valleys further down.
Yet with each changing wind he turns his head, (5)
A silent witness to the shifting sky,
Obeying forces by the heavens led,
Determined not to resist, but to comply.
In the context of the poem, the weather vane's constant turning in response to the wind primarily symbolizes which of the following?
The Conservatory
Beneath the dome of clouded lead and glass,
The captive orchids turn their pale desires
Toward a sun that does not dare to pass
Beyond the shadow of our brickwork spires.
Here, summer is a cold and captured thing,
Conserved by coal-fed fires in the floor,
Where mock-birds on a copper wire sing,
And guard the hinges of the locked glass door.
We tend the soil with hands that fear the loam,
And trim the leaf to fit the narrow frame,
Forgetful of the wild, unpeopled home
From which these green and silent exiles came.
In the poem, the conservatory ('dome of clouded lead and glass') serves primarily as a symbol of which of the following?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Scribe of the Archive
I ink the names of kings who left no trace,
And trace the boundaries of forgotten lands;
I give the ancient dead a quiet face,
And place the faded scrolls in patient hands.
How grand, they say, to hold the keys of time,
To walk with phantoms through the dusty hall!
Yet in this chamber of decay and rhyme,
I only watch the shadows rise and fall.
No crown I save can warm this freezing stone,
No charted empire yields a breath of air;
I write of thousand lives, yet sit alone,
Enslaved to histories I cannot share.
Which of the following best describes the shift in the speaker's attitude toward their role as a scribe?
Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.
The Rusted Compass
The brass is dulled with salt and years of spray,
Its needle frozen on a nameless north,
No longer yielding to the tide's affray
Or urging the reluctant vessel forth.
It rests upon the captain's cluttered desk, (5)
A paperweight for charts of seas forgot,
Where monstrous krakens, coiled and grotesque,
Guard empty islands that the mapmaker sought.
Yet when the cabin windows start to shake,
And the low wind begins its nightly hum, (10)
The sleeping iron stirs, as if to wake,
Trembling toward a shore that will not come.
In the poem, how does the symbolic function of the compass's needle shift in the final stanza?
Read the poem "London" (1794) by William Blake:
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
Which of the following best describes how the transition from the second stanza to the third stanza develops the poem's central thematic argument?
Read the following lines from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43, first published in 1850:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
In lines 2-4 ("I love... ideal grace"), the use of enjambment primarily serves to do which of the following?
Read the following poem by William Wordsworth, first published in 1807:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
In the poem's final two lines, which of the following best describes the function of the enjambment?
Read the following poem carefully before answering the question.
The Wake of Years
We stood beside the slow and silted stream,
Where heavy willows leaned to touch the dark,
And watched the silver ripples fade and gleam,
Like ash that drifts from some forgotten spark.
You reached to scoop the Lethe in your palm,
To wash the bitter salt of grief away,
Seeking the quiet of that ancient calm
That makes a ghost of every yesterday.
But I withheld my hand, and turned aside;
To lose the sting would be to lose the scar,
And I would rather keep the rising tide
Than drift where no remembered shorelines are.
In the poem, the allusion to "Lethe" (line 5) primarily serves to accomplish which of the following?
Read the poem below by William Wordsworth (1770–1850), published in 1807:
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 wreathèd horn.
Which of the following best describes how the transition in line 9 ("Great God! I’d rather be...") develops the poem’s central thematic argument?
Read the following excerpt from Anne Bradstreet's seventeenth-century poem "The Author to Her Book" carefully before choosing your answer:
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags to wander to and fro,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge) by press.
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
Which of the following best describes the function of the central conceit in this excerpt?
The Obsidian Mirror
Within the darkened frame, the polished stone (1)
Reflects no flame that burns upon the hearth,
But gathers up the shadow-shapes alone,
Discarding all the colors of the earth. (4)
The seeker peers into the featureless deep, (5)
To trace the contour of a hidden face,
Where ancient truths and quiet specters sleep,
Beyond the boundaries of time and space. (8)
Yet in the glass, no solid form appears— (9)
Only the viewer's eye, grown wide with fears. (10)
In the poem, the 'polished stone' (line 1) functions primarily as a symbol of which of the following?
Read the following poem carefully:
The Ledger and the Wind
The ink is dry upon the heavy page,
Where names and numbers stand in neat design;
Each coin and acre tallied in its cage,
A quiet order ruled by rule and line.
But past the window, oak leaves wild and free
Are scattered by a sudden, nameless gust;
They pay no tribute to the registry,
Nor turn their gold to ledger-keeping dust.
While one is bound to keep its silent lease,
The other flings its wealth upon the air,
And in their clash, the mind finds no release,
Divided between duty and despair.
Which of the following best describes the primary function of the structural juxtaposition between the first two stanzas (lines 1��8)?