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Test: Common Core: 8th Grade English Language Arts
Adapted from “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1865; 1900)
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
| 1. | The author starts each of the first four lines of the poem with “when.” Which of the following effects does this have? |
It reveals for certain that the narrator has seen the astronomer speak on four different occasions.
It makes the lines seem similar and leaves the reader waiting for the narrator’s sentence to be completed.
It makes the lines seem related even though they are talking about four very different things.
It suggests that the narrator would rather listen to the astronomer than look at the stars.
It informs the reader that the subject of the astronomy lecture has to do with time in some way.
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