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Test: Common Core: 12th Grade English Language Arts
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.
| 1. | When read in the context of the rest of the poem, what is the purpose of the bolded and underlined sentence? |
To emphasize the beauty of spring by calling attention to a different sensory experience: smell
To emphasize the inevitability of death by contrasting with the imagery that follows it
To ironically call attention to the odor of the adressee
To straightforwardly assert the value of the sensory experiences of spring
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