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Unseen Poetry Practice Questions

Question 1

32 marks

In this poem, the speaker hears a woman singing and is taken back to his childhood.

Piano

D. H. Lawrence

1Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
5In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
10With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

‘Piano’ by D. H. Lawrence (1918).

(28.1)

In ‘Piano’, how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about his childhood memories?

[24 marks]

(28.2)

In this poem, the speaker also remembers his childhood.

I Remember, I Remember

Thomas Hood

1I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
5He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.
I remember, I remember
10The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups—
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
15The laburnum on his birthday,—
The tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
20To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.
25I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
30But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

‘I Remember, I Remember’ by Thomas Hood (1826).

In both ‘Piano’ and ‘I Remember, I Remember’ the speakers describe their feelings about their childhood. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these feelings?

[8 marks]

Question 2

32 marks

In this poem, a father describes how he punished his young son.

The Toys

Coventry Patmore

1My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,
I struck him, and dismiss’d
5With hard words and unkiss’d,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
10With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
15He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
20And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray’d
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
25Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood,
Thy great commanded good,
30Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’

‘The Toys’ by Coventry Patmore (1877).

(28.1)

In ‘The Toys’, how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about his son?

[24 marks]

(28.2)

In this poem, the poet writes about the death of his son at the age of seven.

On My First Son

Ben Jonson

1Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy;
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
5Oh! could I lose all father, now! for why,
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scaped world’s, and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
10Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

‘On My First Son’ by Ben Jonson (1616).

In both ‘The Toys’ and ‘On My First Son’ the speakers describe their feelings about their sons. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these feelings?

[8 marks]

Question 3

32 marks

In this poem, the speaker thinks he hears the voice of a woman he loved, who has died.

The Voice

Thomas Hardy

1Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
5Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
10Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever consigned to existlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
15Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
And the woman calling.

‘The Voice’ by Thomas Hardy (1912).

(28.1)

In ‘The Voice’, how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about the woman he has lost?

[24 marks]

(28.2)

In this poem, the speaker asks someone she loves to remember her after her death.

Remember

Christina Rossetti

1Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
5Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
10And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti (1862).

In both ‘The Voice’ and ‘Remember’ the speakers describe feelings about death and memory. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these feelings?

[8 marks]

Question 4

32 marks

In this poem, written at the very end of the nineteenth century, the speaker hears a bird singing on a winter evening.

The Darkling Thrush

Thomas Hardy

1I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
5The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings from broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
10The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
15And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice outburst among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
20Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
25So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
30His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Thomas Hardy (1900).

(28.1)

In ‘The Darkling Thrush’, how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about the thrush’s song?

[24 marks]

(28.2)

In this poem, the speaker remembers a moment when his train stopped at a country station.

Adlestrop

Edward Thomas

1Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
5The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
10And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
15Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas (1917).

In both ‘The Darkling Thrush’ and ‘Adlestrop’ the speakers describe a moment when they hear birdsong. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these moments?

[8 marks]

Question 5

32 marks

This poem was written during the First World War.

There Will Come Soft Rains

(War Time)

Sara Teasdale

1There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
5Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
10If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ by Sara Teasdale (1918).

(28.1)

In ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’, how does the poet present ideas about nature and war?

[24 marks]

(28.2)

This poem was also written during the First World War.

In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”

Thomas Hardy

1Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
5Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wight
10Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ by Thomas Hardy (1915).

In both ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ and ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ the poets describe nature and ordinary life continuing despite war. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these ideas?

[8 marks]

Question 6

32 marks

In this poem, the speaker talks to someone he loves about growing old.

Sonnet 73

William Shakespeare

1That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold—
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
5In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after Sunset fadeth in the West,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
10That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

‘Sonnet 73’ by William Shakespeare (1609).

(28.1)

In ‘Sonnet 73’, how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about growing old?

[24 marks]

(28.2)

In this poem, the speaker imagines the woman he loves in her old age.

When You Are Old

W. B. Yeats

1When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
5How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
10Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

‘When You Are Old’ by W. B. Yeats (1892).

In both ‘Sonnet 73’ and ‘When You Are Old’ the speakers describe feelings about old age. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these feelings?

[8 marks]