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A Late Walk
1 When I go up through the mowing field,
2 The headless aftermath,
3 Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
4 Half closes the garden path.
5 And when I come to the garden ground,
6 The whir of sober birds
7 Up from the tangle of withered weeds
8 Is sadder than any words
9 A tree beside the wall stands bare,
10 But a leaf that lingered brown,
11 Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
12 Comes softly rattling down.
13 I end not far from my going forth
14 By picking the faded blue
15 Of the last remaining aster flower
16 To carry again to you.
The following is an example of alliteration:
"Withered weeds" (line 7) is an example of alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds at the beginning of words.
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Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14)
1 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
2 As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
3 That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
4 Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
5 I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
6 Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
7 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
8 But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
9 Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
10 But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
11 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
12 Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
13 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
14 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The only example of alliteration throughout this sonnet is .
"break, blow, burn," (line 4) is the only example of alliteration throughout this sonnet, as each word has the same sound at its beginning.
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1 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
2 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
3 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
4 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
5 I love thee to the level of everyday's
6 Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
7 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
8 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
9 I love thee with the passion put to use
10 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
11 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
12 With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath,
13 Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
14 I shall but love thee better after death.
This fourteen-line rhyming lyric poem is a typical .
This fourteen-line rhyming lyric poem is a typical sonnet written in iambic pentameter.
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1 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
2 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
3 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
4 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
5 I love thee to the level of everyday's
6 Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
7 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
8 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
9 I love thee with the passion put to use
10 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
11 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
12 With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath,
13 Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
14 I shall but love thee better after death.
"I shall but love thee better after death," (line 14) can be described as .
"I shall but love thee better after death," (line 14) can be described as hyperbole, as it is an exaggerated figure of speech.
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1 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
11 Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
13 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
"Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade," (line 9) is an example of __________
"Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade," (line 9) is an example of personification, as personification is a figure of speech wherein an inanimate object or idea is endowed with human qualities or abilities. In this case, death is said to brag.
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1 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
11 Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
13 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The speaker's claim that "this gives life to thee" in line 14 is arguably an example of __________.
The speaker's claim that "this gives life to thee" (line 14) is an example of hyperbole, as the speaker is making an exaggerated claim that his or her poetry will give the beloved immortality.
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1 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
2 My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
3 Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
4 Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
5 Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
6 Will man lament the state he should envy?
7 To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
8 And if no other misery, yet age!
9 Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, "Here doth lie
10 Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,
11 For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
12 As what he loves may never like too much."
"flesh's rage," (Line 7) is an example of __________.
"flesh's rage," (Line 7) is an example of personification, giving an inanimate object or abstract idea a living quality.
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1 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
2 My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
3 Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
4 Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
5 Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
6 Will man lament the state he should envy?
7 To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
8 And if no other misery, yet age!
9 Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, "Here doth lie
10 Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,
11 For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
12 As what he loves may never like too much."
In lines 9–10, "Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, 'Here doth lie/Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,'" the speaker refers to his dead son as a "piece of poetry." This is an example of __________.
When the speaker refers to his dead son as a "piece of poetry," (Line 10), this is an example of metaphor, a comparison made between two essentially unlike things.
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Adapted from "The Author to Her Book" by Anne Bradstreet (1678)
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 literary technique that Bradstreet uses in addressing her book directly as her "offspring" is __________.
Personification, which imbues an inanimate object with human traits, is the most likely answer. Apostrophe involves the address of a personified object which is not present, but Bradstreet's poem implies that her "offspring" is close by.
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1 Stella, whence doth this new assault arise,
2 A conquer’d, yielden, ransack’d heart to win?
3 Whereto long since through my long batter’d eyes,
4 Whole armies of thy beauties entered in.
5 And there long since, Love thy lieutenant lies,
6 My forces raz’d, thy banners rais’d within:
7 Of conquest, do not these effects suffice,
8 But wilt now war upon thine own begin?
9 With so sweet voice, and by sweet Nature so
10 In sweetest strength, so sweetly skill’d withal,
11 In all sweet stratagems sweet Art can show,
12 That not my soul, which at thy foot did fall
13 Long since, forc’d by thy beams, but stone nor tree
14 By Sense’s privilege, can ‘scape from thee.
Which of the following is an example of alliteration?
“Liutenant lies” (line 5) is an example of alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds or same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words.
(Passage adapted from "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sydney, XXXVI.1-14 (1591))
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1 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
2 The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
3 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
4 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
5 But O heart! heart! heart!
6 O the bleeding drops of red,
7 Where on the deck my Captain lies,
8 Fallen cold and dead.
(1865)
In which line is the speaker using foreshadowing?
In lines 3 and 4, the speaker is subtly telling the reader that something undesirable is going to happen ("the port is near . . . the vessel grim and daring"). All of the other lines dictate what is happening in the present, not what is to come.
(Passage adapted from "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, ln. 1-8, 1865)
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1 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
2 The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
3 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
4 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
5 But O heart! heart! heart!
6 O the bleeding drops of red,
7 Where on the deck my Captain lies,
8 Fallen cold and dead.
(1865)
What literary technique is used in the first line of the poem?
An apostrophe is a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if that person or thing were alive, present, and able to reply. Here, the speaker is talking to his captain, who is longer alive.
(Passage adapted from "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, ln. 1-8, 1865)
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1 Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
2 Weigh thy Opinion against Providence;
3 Call Imperfection what thou fancy'st such,
4 Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
5 Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
6 Yet cry, If Man's unhappy, God's unjust;
7 If Man alone engross not Heav'n's high care,
8 Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
9 Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
10 Re-judge his justice, be the GOD of GOD!
11 In Pride, in reasoning Pride, our error lies;
12 All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
13 Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
14 Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
15 Aspiring to be Gods, if Angels fell,
16 Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel;
17 And who but wishes to invert the laws
18 Of ORDER, sins against th' Eternal Cause.
(1734)
Which of the following is an example of a slant rhyme (also called "half rhyme")?
"Abodes" / "gods" (lines 13/14) is an example of a slant rhyme. Slant rhymes are words that come close to rhyming, but are not full rhymes.
(Passage adapted from "An Essay on Man" by Alexander Pope, I.IV.1-18)
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1 Stella, whence doth this new assault arise,
2 A conquer’d, yielden, ransack’d heart to win?
3 Whereto long since through my long batter’d eyes,
4 Whole armies of thy beauties entered in.
5 And there long since, Love thy lieutenant lies,
6 My forces raz’d, thy banners rais’d within:
7 Of conquest, do not these effects suffice,
8 But wilt now war upon thine own begin?
9 With so sweet voice, and by sweet Nature so
10 In sweetest strength, so sweetly skill’d withal,
11 In all sweet stratagems sweet Art can show,
12 That not my soul, which at thy foot did fall
13 Long since, forc’d by thy beams, but stone nor tree
14 By Sense’s privilege, can ‘scape from thee.
"Conquer’d, yielden, ransack’d" (line 2) and "my forces raz’d, thy banners rais’d within" (line 6) are examples of __________.
"Conquer’d, yielden, ransack’d" (line 2) and "my forces raz’d, thy banners rais’d within" (line 6) are examples of asyndetons. An asyndeton is a figure of speech where one or several conjunctions are intentionally left out of the sentence.
(Passage adapted from "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sydney, XXXVI.1-14 (1591))
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1 Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
2 Nor question much
3 That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm;
4 The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
5 For 'tis my outward soul,
6 Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,
7 Will leave this to control
8 And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.
9 For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
10 Through every part
11 Can tie those parts, and make me one of all,
12 Those hairs which upward grew, and strength and art
13 Have from a better brain,
14 Can better do'it; except she meant that I
15 By this should know my pain,
16 As prisoners then are manacled, when they'are condemn'd to die.
17 Whate'er she meant by'it, bury it with me,
18 For since I am
19 Love's martyr, it might breed idolatry,
20 If into other hands these relics came;
21 As 'twas humility
22 To afford to it all that a soul can do,
23 So, 'tis some bravery,
24 That since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.
(1633)
Which of the following are exhibit rhyme that is both slant rhyme and an end rhyme?
"Gone" (line 6) and "dissolution" (line 8) are examples of a slant rhyme and an end rhyme. "Slant rhymes" are rhymes with similar but not exactly the same sounds, and "end rhymes" are rhymes of the final syllables in two lines of poetry.
(Passage adapted from "The Funeral" by John Donne)
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Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Which of the following literary techniques is used most frequently in this poem?
Alliteration is used most frequently in the poem. Alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds or same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words. The following are some of the examples of alliteration in the poem:
"Fresh-firecoal . . . finches" (line 4)
"Plotted and pieced . . . plough" (line 5)
"Fold, fallow" (line 5)
"tackle and trim" (line 6)
"spare, strange" (line 7)
"fickle, freckled" (line 8)
"swift, slow; sweet, sour" (line 9)
"adazzle, dim" ("d" sound) (line 9)
"fathers-forrth" (line 10)
(Passage adapted from "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918))
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Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
“Gear and tackle and trim” (line 6) is an example of a(n) __________, while " "counter, original, spare, strange" (line 7) is an example of a(n) __________.
“Gear and tackle and trim” (line 6) is an example of polysyndeton, while "counter, original, spare, strange" (line 7) is an example of an asyndeton. A polysyndeton is a figure of speech where conjunctions are repeated frequently in a sequence, while an asyndeton is a figure of speech where one or several conjunctions are intentionally left out of the sentence.
(Passage adapted from "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
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1 If but some vengeful god would call to me
2 From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
3 Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
4 That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
5 Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
6 Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
7 Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
8 Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
9 But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
10 And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
11 —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
12 And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
13 These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
14 Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
(1898)
"—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain" (line 11) is an example of ___________.
"—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain" (line 11) is an example of personification, as "personification" is a figure of speech where an inanimate object or idea possesses human attributes or abilities. Here, "Casualty" (an idea) is obstructing the sun and rain. An idea cannot obstruct the sun or rain. Humans have the ability to obstruct objects, though they cannot obstruct the sun or rain.
(Passage adapted from "Hap" by Thomas Hardy)
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Cupid, because thou shin'st in Stella's eyes
from Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella
1 Cupid, because thou shin’st in Stella’s eyes,
2 That from her locks, thy day-nets, none ‘scapes free,
3 That those lips swell, so full of thee they be,
4 That her sweet breath makes oft thy flames to rise,
5 That in her breast thy pap well sugared lies,
6 That her Grace gracious makes thy wrongs, that she
7 What words so ere she speak persuades for thee,
8 That her clear voice lifts thy fame to the skies:
9 Thou countest Stella thine, like those whose powers
10 Having got up a breach by fighting well,
11 Cry, “Victory, this fair day all is ours.”
12 Oh no, her heart is such a citadel,
13 So fortified with wit, stored with disdain,
14 That to win it, is all the skill and pain.
(1591)
"Oh no, her heart is such a citadel" (line 12) is an example of a(n) __________.
"Oh no, her heart is such a citadel" is an example of a metaphor, as a "metaphor" is a figure of speech that is used to compare two objects without the use of words like "like" or "as." Stella's heart is being compared to a citadel.
(Passage adapted from "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sydney, XII.1-14)
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Adapted from Life and Remains of John Clare "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" by John Clare (1872, ed. J. L. Cherry)
I am! Yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me, like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss'd
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise.
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod—
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.
“The living sea of waking dream” is __________.
Of the “living sea of waking dream,” there is not a lot we can easily say without presuming too much. We can see, though, that the torment of “waking dream” is in contrast to the “sweetly slept” of the third stanza. As they are placed in adjoining stanzas, we can call them "contrasted." We can eliminate the other potential answers, as there is no particular contrast between the “sea of waking dream” and the “Creator” or the “shipwreck.” It could be described as "nightmarish," but it is not a nightmare, and the poem is certainly not satirical.
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