Poetry I

The Beekeeper

(1) He moves among the silent, golden hives
(2) Beneath the heavy canopy of oak,
(3) To tend the secret, concentrated lives
(4) Obscured by drifts of slow, sweet-smelling smoke.
(5) The wooden frames are lifted to the light,
(6) Where amber cells in perfect hexagons
(7) Hold fast the summer’s brief, industrious flight,
(8) Beneath the gaze of cold, declining suns.

(9) But winter waits behind the orchard wall,
(10) To freeze the pollen on the withered bough,
(11) And in the shadow of the year’s decline,
(12) The keeper stands, considering the fall,
(13) Knowing the sweetness gathered then and now
(14) Must serve to warm a colder, darker line.

Which of the following best describes how the division between the first stanza (lines 1–8) and the second stanza (lines 9–14) functions to develop the theme of the poem?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing the best answer.

(1) The ribbed glass arches, fractured by the frost,
(2) Admit a pale and fractured winter light,
(3) Where once the orange-blossom cloyed the air.
(4) Now, only dry clay pots in fragments lie,
(5) And underfoot, the grit of gravel grates
(6) With every step, a sharp and hollow rasp.
(7) A sudden gust sweeps through the rusted frame:
(8) The scent of rotting loam and frozen pine
(9) Replaces all that sweet, remembered heat,
(10) As iron girders shiver in the cold.

In the poem, the shift from the sweet, cloying memory of "orange-blossom" (line 3) to the "sharp and hollow rasp" of gravel underfoot (line 6) primarily functions to mirror a shift in tone from which of the following?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer.

The Cartographer

(1) He draws the grid of latitude and line,
To bind the wild, unmeasured sea in ink,
And marks the shoals with careful, neat design
Along the harbor’s dark and rocky brink.

(5) Yet where the neat, ruled margins end, the page
Dissolves to white, uncharted and unknown;
The ink-drawn boundaries cannot assuage
The restless tide that claims the coast alone.

His pen suspends above the empty space,
(10) Where nameless waters swell without a guide;
He leaves a blankness in the designated place,
Conceding to the power of the tide.

Which of the following best describes the function of the transition between the first stanza (lines 1–4) and the second stanza (lines 5–8)?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer:

The Sundial

Upon the lawn the bronze dial stands alone,
To mark the golden hours as they pass,
It traces shadows on the silent stone,
And writes the day's departure on the grass.
But when the dark descends in quiet shade, (5)
The metal pointer loses all its power;
Within the night, the structured contours fade,
And time flows on, unmeasured by the hour.

In the poem, how does the structural shift between the first stanza (lines 1-4) and the second stanza (lines 5-8) contribute to the development of the theme?

Read the following poem carefully:

1 The shuttle flies, a wooden swallow, through
2 The warp of gray, the weft of faded blue;
3 A silent music, measured by the tread
4 Of heavy treadles and the snapping thread.
5 Here in the damp and solitary room,
6 A lifetime narrows to the wooden loom,
7 Where phantom fields of summer clover grow
8 Beneath the fingers, row by quiet row.
9 But look—the pattern twists; a sudden thread
10 Of sharp, intrusive crimson, swiftly spread,
11 And through the quiet meadows of the cloth
12 There flutters, dark and strange, a woolen moth.

Which of the following best describes the shift in the speaker's tone from the first eight lines to the final four lines of the poem?

Consider the following poem:

The morning sun arose in golden pride,
And chased the heavy shadows from the hill;
The happy brooklet laughed along its side,
And all the forest was alive and still.
But ere the noon could reach its highest throne,
A sudden tempest swept the darkened sky;
The shivering birds sat silent and alone,
And winds of winter began to howl and cry.

Which of the following best describes how the tonal shift between the first four lines and the last four lines functions within the poem?

Read the following lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" (1818) carefully:

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;

In line 8, the speaker uses synecdoche ("The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed") primarily to achieve which of the following effects?

Read the passage below:

(1) The brass wheels turn their teeth in sleep,
(2) A copper pulse that counts the hours,
(3) Where oil and camphor rise and creep
(4) In heavy drafts through wooden towers.
(5) The ticking swells, a dry, metallic rain
(6) That falls upon the listener’s ear,
(7) Until, through cracks in the windowpane,
(8) The scent of wet loam, sharp and clear,
(9) Invades the shelf, the pendulum's swing,
(10) And breaks the clockwork's frozen spring.

How does the sensory shift from the dry, auditory details of the clockwork (lines 5–6) to the moist, olfactory details of the outdoors (lines 8–10) contribute to the development of the speaker's perspective?

The poem below describes a morning landscape after a rainfall.

The early sun begins its gentle rise,
To paint the sleepy hills in shades of gold;
A quiet wonder wakes the morning skies
As ancient trees their dewy leaves unfold.
No hurried step disturbs the grassy lane,
Where spiders spin their webs of silver thread;
The world is cleansed of yesterday's long rain,
And peaceful dreams are lifted from their bed.
A single bird begins a soft refrain,
A song of simple praise for light restored,
Free from the winter's dark and biting pain,
To welcome what the morning will afford.

Which of the following best describes the overall mood established in the poem?

Read the following poem carefully:

(1) I watch the chimney stack consume the sky,
(2) And spit its dark defiance at the sun,
(3) While down below, the hurried figures ply
(4) Their heavy trades until the day is done.
(5) They call this progress, and they count the gold,
(6) While green fields wither under iron feet;
(7) But in the quiet dusk, when winds blow cold,
(8) I hear the ancient earth refuse defeat.

Which of the following best describes the speaker’s perspective on the industrial growth described in the poem?

Read the following poem carefully before choosing your answer:

The Conservatory

Under the vaulted ribs of iron-held glass,
The captive palms of Congo droop and sigh,
Where damp heat mimics what has come to pass
Beneath a colder, pale northern sky.
Here orchids climb in mock-triumphant bloom,
Fed by the steam of coal-fired pipes below,
To weave a green illusion in the room,
While outside, London’s soot begins to snow.
The lady walks in silk of peacock blue,
And clips a stem of foreign jasmine white,
Oblivious to the moisture and the dew
Wrung from a land she’ll never see by night.
The glass confines this miniature domain,
A conquered wilderness in iron bound.

In the poem, how does the setting of the conservatory primarily function to comment on the broader historical context of the era?

Read the following lines carefully:

The harvest leaves now drift upon the lawn,
Discarded gold that once adorned the bough;
They whisper of a summer that is gone,
And carpet all the chilly earth below.

In the second line, the word "gold" connotatively suggests which of the following about the fallen leaves?

The hearth-fire dies; the embers lose their glow,
And silent shadows dance upon the wall,
While outside, softly falls the winter snow,
To drape the garden in a frozen pall.
No wind disturbs the branches of the oak,
No distant carriage rattles down the lane;
The world is wrapped in quiet's heavy cloak,
And peace resides within this dark domain.
Yet in this stillness, memories arise,
Of laughter shared beside a brighter flame,
And tears start unbidden to my eyes,
For those who nevermore will speak my name.

Based on the poem above, which of the following best describes the transition in tone from the first eight lines to the final four lines?

The Gas-Lamp Lighter

The twilight drops its heavy, purple veil
Upon the cobblestones of London town,
While through the mist, a figure thin and pale
Adjusts his ladder, climbing up and down.
With spark and wick, he wakes the iron post,
And yellow halos bloom against the gray,
Chasing the shadows like a fleeing ghost,
And turning foggy night to mimic day.
Where once the oil-lamps sputtered in the dark,
Now steady gaslight flares in rows aligned,
But in the street, no child stops to remark
How swift the older world is left behind.

How does the contrast between the older oil-lamps and the new gaslight function to develop the poem's setting?

Read the following poem excerpt:

The garden walls were safe, and high, and thick,
Where crimson roses climbed in orderly grace,
And time was measured by the sundial's tick,
A quiet, patterned, and unchanging place.
Yet when the iron gate was swung aside,
The wild, unbridled forest met my sight,
A pathless depth where shadows loved to hide,
And untamed winds blew fiercely through the night.

Which of the following best describes the contrast established between the first stanza (lines 1��4) and the second stanza (lines 5–8)?

The Gilded Library

The velvet curtains shut the street away,
Where hungry voices battle with the cold;
Within, the leather-bound philosophers
Sleep in their rows of mahogany and gold.
A single coal drops in the polished grate,
While marble busts of Roman statesmen stare
With blank, white eyes upon the Persian rug,
Excluding all the winter's harsh despair.
Here time is measured by a silver chime,
And history is bound in calfskin neat,
Safe from the soot of chimneys and the crowd
That shivers in the narrow, iron street.

Which of the following best describes the primary thematic function of the contrast between the library's interior and the street outside?

Read the following poem excerpt:

The heavy velvet curtain hides the stage,
A silent world of shadows, dark and still,
Where actors wait in anxious, quiet dread,
Submissive to the drama's pending will.

But then the footlights flash, the music starts,
And color floods the once-inactive space;
A sudden warmth invades their eager hearts,
As motion, light, and laughter fill the place.

Which of the following best describes the shift in tone that occurs between the first stanza (lines 1–4) and the second stanza (lines 5–8)?

Read the following lines from John Donne’s poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (written c. 1611) carefully before choosing your answer:

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it. (line 4)

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. (line 8)

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat. (line 12)

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do. (line 16)

In lines 9–12, which of the following best describes how the speaker uses figurative language to characterize the separation of the lovers?

The Scribe

(1) His quill moves slow across the parchment page,
(2) To trap the fleeting thoughts of quiet men,
(3) And hold them safe from winter’s frosty rage
(4) Until the spring demands they breathe again.

(5) But ink is dark, and paper soon decays;
(6) The words he writes, like leaves upon the lawn,
(7) Are swept away by time's relentless days,
(8) To leave no trace before the rising dawn.

In the poem, how does the transition from the first stanza (lines 1–4) to the second stanza (lines 5–8) affect the development of the poem's theme?

Read the following lines from William Blake's poem "The Tyger" (1794) carefully:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In the third line of the excerpt, the synecdoche "hand or eye" functions primarily to do which of the following?