Card 0 of 190
Thou ill-form’d 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, expos’d to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
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 wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i’ th’ house I find.
In this array ’mongst vulgars mayst thou roam.
In critics' hands, beware thou dost not come;
And take thy way where yet thou art not known,
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none:
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.
The poetic form that Bradstreet uses in this poem is __________.
The poem is written in heroic couplets, which are rhymed pairs of lines in iambic pentameter. The poem would only be in blank verse if the iambic pentameter lines did not rhyme. The poem is also too long and in the wrong form to be a sonnet and is too short to be a sestina.
Passage adapted from "The Author to Her Book" by Anne Bradstreet (1678)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from “Solitary Death, make me thine own” in Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses by Michael Field (pseudonym of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper) (1893)
Solitary Death, make me thine own,
And let us wander the bare fields together;
Yea, thou and I alone
Roving in unembittered unison forever.
I will not harry thy treasure-graves,
I do not ask thy still hands a lover;
My heart within me craves
To travel till we twain Time’s wilderness discover.
To sojourn with thee my soul was bred,
And I, the courtly sights of life refusing,
To the wide shadows fled,
And mused upon thee often as I fell a-musing.
Escaped from chaos, thy mother Night,
In her maiden breast a burthen that awed her,
By cavern waters white
Drew thee her first-born, her unfathered off-spring toward her.
On dewey plats, near twilight dingle,
She oft, to still thee from men’s sobs and curses
In thine ears a-tingle,
Pours her cool charms, her weird, reviving chaunt rehearses.
Though mortals menace thee or elude,
And from thy confines break in swift transgression.
Thou for thyself art sued
Of me, I claim thy cloudy purlieus my possession.
To a long freshwater, where the sea
Stirs the silver flux of the reeds and willows,
Come thou, and beckon me
To lie in the lull of the sand-sequestered billows:
Then take the life I have called my own
And to the liquid universe deliver;
Loosening my spirit’s zone,
Wrap round me as thy limbs the wind, the light, the river.
The MOST conventional aspect of this poem is which of the following?
This poem features a straightforward alternating ABAB rhyme structure in each of its stanzas. Meanwhile, its treatment of Death as a welcome companion is certainly unconventional, as is its extensive and idiosyncratic personification and characterization and its use of imagery in relation to death (Death’s embrace as the welcoming, encompassing hug of a friend, rather than, for example, a bony hand grasping someone’s ankle).
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from "The Mouse’s Petition" in Poems by Anna Letitia Barbauld (1773)
Found in the trap where he had been confined all night by Dr. Priestley, for the sake of making experiments with different kinds of air
“To spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud.” - Virgil
OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.
For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate;
And tremble at th' approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.
If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain.
Oh! do not stain with guiltless blood
Thy hospitable hearth;
Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd
A prize so little worth.
The scatter'd gleanings of a feast
My scanty meals supply;
But if thine unrelenting heart
That slender boon deny,
The cheerful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given;
Let nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of heaven.
The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.
If mind, as ancient sages taught,
A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
In every form the same,
Beware, lest in the worm you crush
A brother's soul you find;
And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.
Or, if this transient gleam of day
Be all of life we share,
Let pity plead within thy breast,
That little all to spare.
So may thy hospitable board
With health and peace be crown'd;
And every charm of heartfelt ease
Beneath thy roof be found.
So when unseen destruction lurks,
Which men like mice may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare.
The use of the underlined word "pensive" in the first line is most likely intended to do what?
The use of "pensive" in this context is intended to draw attention to the speaker's (a mouse being experimented on) individual subjectivity. By framing himself as a "pensive" individual (a conscious being able to think and perceive), the speaker sets up his later pleas for equal ethical consideration. Because he is "pensive," it is wrong to deny him the opportunity to experience "nature" and the "never dying flame" of intellectual engagement as he sees fit.
While the petition is framed as a "prisoner's prayer," and some unconventional religious beliefs are discussed in some later stanzas, the implication is that the mouse is only being detained for the purpose of being experimented on, not persecuted for his beliefs. The line is intended to be read sincerely, not with irony. The rest of the poem asserts the mouse's ability to perceive the world in an individual fashion, and the mouse is a research subject, not a beloved pet. The speaker is the mouse being experimented on, not the researcher conducting the experiment.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from "The Mouse’s Petition" in Poems by Anna Letitia Barbauld (1773)
Found in the trap where he had been confined all night by Dr. Priestley, for the sake of making experiments with different kinds of air
“To spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud.” - Virgil
OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.
For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate;
And tremble at th' approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.
If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain.
Oh! do not stain with guiltless blood
Thy hospitable hearth;
Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd
A prize so little worth.
The scatter'd gleanings of a feast
My scanty meals supply;
But if thine unrelenting heart
That slender boon deny,
The cheerful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given;
Let nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of heaven.
The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.
If mind, as ancient sages taught,
A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
In every form the same,
Beware, lest in the worm you crush
A brother's soul you find;
And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.
Or, if this transient gleam of day
Be all of life we share,
Let pity plead within thy breast,
That little all to spare.
So may thy hospitable board
With health and peace be crown'd;
And every charm of heartfelt ease
Beneath thy roof be found.
So when unseen destruction lurks,
Which men like mice may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare.
In the bolded and underlined excerpt, the pairing of "little" with "all" is used to do what? (Note that the italics are included in the original text.)
The pairing of "little" with "all" in this context is used to create irony, and to illustrate the foolishness of dismissing any aspect of mortal existence. The "little all" that is being referred to here is personal freedom, in addition to literal access to open space and sunlight, which is hardly a "little" thing. The pairing of "little" and "allL here ironizes and shows the failings of ethical systems which apply varying levels of ethical consideration to conscious beings for arbitrary reasons.
Global environmental concerns are not at issue in this poem. The poem is actually arguing for the importance of all individual perceiving consciousness in a complex, constantly varying universe. While it stands to reason that the speaker would advocate for the release of all animals from captivity, in this context that issue is not specifically at play, and the larger issue of ethical reasoning is more specifically being treated.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from "Old Man Traveling" by William Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798 ed.)
The little hedge-row birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought—He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten, one to whom
Long patience has such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing, of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the old man hardly feels.
—I asked him whither he was bound, and what
The object of his journey; he replied
"Sir! I am going many miles to take
"A last leave of my son, a mariner,
"Who from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth,
And there is dying in an hospital."
The juxtaposition of the man's calmness and the information he gives the speaker in the last four underlined lines shows __________.
We must infer from the information given to us by the speaker what the juxtaposition shows us. There is nothing to suggest, from the small amount of information, that the man cannot experience strong emotions, and the fact that the narrator punctuates the poem with the man's son's death shows he wants to emphasize that strong emotions probably should accompany the death of a son. We know the narrator does not want us to consider futility as he or she is full of praise for the old man. We also know the old man is most certainly not unresponsive as he is willing to engage with the speaker. So, we can conclude that the man has reached a level of peace where he can be stoic in the face of death or where his oneness with the world prevents him from falling into hysterics.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Passage adapted from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Spring" (1921).
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know. 5
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify? 10
Not only under the ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. 15
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
This poem is an example of __________.
This poem is written in free verse because it does not use a consistent meter or rhyme scheme. "Blank verse" refers to unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. "A ballad" is a poem set to music, often narrative in its content. "A villanelle" consists of nineteen lines (five tercets and a quatrain) with a repeating rhyme structure. "Iambic tetrameter" refers to a form of meter that consists of four beats ("tetra") in the iambic foot.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Passage adapted from "Poetry" by Marianne Moore (1919)
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Considering the title, which word best describes the initial tone of this poem?
The tone is ironic because of the poem's context. The author describes her distaste for the "fiddle" of poetry in a poem, giving an almost satirical critique of the form and its cultural context. If the author's opinion about poetry were plain, uncomplicated, and unironic, we would expect her to write her analysis of poetry in a different form.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem is an example of which poetic form?
A sonnet loosely defined as any poem of exactly fourteen lines, with various subtypes. This poem, by William Shakespeare, is an example of a Shakespearean sonnet. It is written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABAB (end-rhymes every other line) until the final couplet, which rhymes CC (two lines rhymed back-to-back).
Passage adapted from Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" (1609)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
What rhyme scheme is this?
Free verse describes poetry that does not have a particular rhyme scheme or meter, and that is the case with this poem. Blank verse refers to unrhymed iambic pentameter, and heroic verse refers to rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. Sprung rhythm is a pattern designed to mimic the cadences of natural spoken speech.
Passage adapted from Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking.” North of Boston. (1915)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
1 Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
5 But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
9 Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny,
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
13 Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?
(1609)
The form of this poem is best described as ______________.
This is a sonnet. Specifically, it is a Shakespearean sonnet, a type of sonnet which follows these specifications: it is written in iambic pentameter, has fourteen lines, and employs the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
A monologue is a long speech delivered by a single character in a play.
Terza rima is a rhyme scheme of ABA, BCB, CDC, and so on, which is most commonly found in Italian.
A ballad is a narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines. They often include a refrain and are frequently meant to be sung.
A villanelle is a poem of nineteen lines with the rhyme scheme ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABAA. The first and third lines of the first stanza repeat throughout the poem and reappear together in the final stanza.
Passage adapted from Shakespeare's "Sonnet 115" (1609)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
(1847)
What meter does this poem employ?
This is one of the English language’s best known examples of dactylic hexameter. This meter involves six pairs of one long and two short syllables (although the occasionally deviates from this scheme for the sake of sense and sound). Dactylic hexameter is also sometimes known as heroic hexameter.
Passage adapted from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”(1847)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin,
Before Polygamy was made a Sin;
When Man on many multipli’d his kind,
E’r one to one was cursedly confin’d,
When Nature prompted and no Law deni’d (5)
Promiscuous Use of Concubine and Bride;
Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heavens own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land. (10)
(1681)
What is the rhyme scheme of this poem?
The passage exhibits rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter, which is also known as heroic couplets. (In the case of satirical or ironic couplets, the form is often referred to as a “mock heroic.”) Don’t confuse this with blank verse, which is the use of unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Passage adapted from “Absalom and Achitophel,” by John Dryden (1681)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews, (5)
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter (10)
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub…
What rhyme scheme does this passage employ?
This poem demonstrates the use of quatrains, four-line units of poetry. Sprung rhythm is a pattern designed to mimic the cadences of natural spoken speech, while heroic couplets are the use of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter. Blank verse refers to unrhymed iambic pentameter, and heroic verse refers to rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. Free verse describes poetry that does not have a particular rhyme scheme or meter.
Passage adapted from Arthur Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat,” (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews, (5)
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter (10)
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub…
What meter do lines 2 and 6 display?
The lines in question contain 12 syllables with no particular pattern of unstressed or stressed syllables. This 12-syllable meter is known as alexandrines. (In the original French version of the poem, the entire work is written in alexandrines.)
Passage adapted from Arthur Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat,” (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
'Hard by yon Wood, now frowning as in Scorn,
'Mutt'ring his wayward Fancies he wou'd rove,
'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
'Or craz'd with Care, or cross'd in hopeless Love.
'One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill, (5)
'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree;
'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill,
'Nor up the Lawn, nor at the Wood was he.
'The next with Dirges due in sad Array
'Slow thro' the Church-way Path we saw him born. (10)
'Approach and read (for thou canst read) the Lay,
'Grav'd on the Stone beneath yon aged Thorn.
(1751)
In what meter is this passage written?
Be careful not to mistake rhymed iambic pentameter in ABAB form for heroic couplets (AABB form). This passage is in rhymed iambic pentameter in an alternating rhyme scheme.
Excerpt adapted from Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. (1751)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, (5)
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
How is this poem organized?
This poem is separated into units of three lines each: tercets. Quatrains are units of four lines, and couplets are units of two lines. An anapest is a poetic foot consisting of two unstressed and one stressed syllables. A spondee is a poetic foot consisting of two stressed syllables.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.(5)
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
What is this poem’s organizing structure?
This poem is not organized by any uniform metrical pattern or specific type of stanza. It also lacks rhyming, although it does have a strong voice and cadence. In the absence of overt organizational schemes, we can classify this passage as an example of free verse.
Passage adapted from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass (1855).
Compare your answer with the correct one above
… Come, my friends,
’T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths (5)
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
(1842)
What meter is this poem?
Here, we have unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. This is known as blank verse. (Free verse, on the other hand, is both unrhymed and unmetered verse.)
Passage adapted from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot; (5)
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
(1833)
What is the meter of this passage?
An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A trochee is the opposite: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. This poem alternates between lines of iambs and lines of trochees, but there are generally four pairs of them.
Passage adapted from “The Lady of Shalott,” Poems by Alfred Tennyson (1833).
Compare your answer with the correct one above
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,(5)
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;(10)
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.
What form is this poem?
This poem is one of Shelley’s most famous sonnets and was in fact written to compete in a sonnet contest. Its telltale 14 lines should be a tipoff (villanelles have 19, for example). Although it doesn’t follow the typical 8-line, then 6-line stanzaic form, and although its rhyme scheme is atypical, none of the other choices fit better than “sonnet.”
Passage adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (1818)
Compare your answer with the correct one above