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Unseen Poetry Practice Questions

Question 1

20 marks

Read the two poems and answer Question 12.

The Old Woman

1As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face.
5As the spent radiance
Of the winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done,
Her brood gone from her,
10And her thoughts as still
As the waters
Under a ruined mill.

‘The Old Woman’ by Joseph Campbell (early 1900s).

Glossary: travail: hard work; also the labour of giving birth; brood: a family of young children.

I Look Into My Glass

1I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”
5For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve;
10Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

‘I Look Into My Glass’ by Thomas Hardy (1898).

Glossary: glass: mirror; undistrest: not distressed, untroubled; equanimity: calmness; abide: stay.

Compare the ways the writers present old age in ‘The Old Woman’ and ‘I Look Into My Glass’.

In your answer you should compare the:

  • ideas in the poems
  • poets’ use of language
  • poets’ use of form and structure.

Use evidence from the poems to support your comparison.

(20)

Question 2

20 marks

Read the two poems and answer Question 12.

The Lamplighter

1My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky.
It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.
5Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;
But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,
O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!
For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
10And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!

‘The Lamplighter’ by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885).

Glossary: Leerie: a Scots name for the man who lit the gas street lamps; posting: hurrying.

Nurse’s Song

1When voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
5‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,
Till the morning appears in the skies.’
‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
10And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep.’
‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.’
15The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed,
And all the hills echoèd.

‘Nurse’s Song’ by William Blake (1789).

Glossary: the green: a village green, where children played.

Compare the ways the writers present childhood in ‘The Lamplighter’ and ‘Nurse’s Song’.

In your answer you should compare the:

  • ideas in the poems
  • poets’ use of language
  • poets’ use of form and structure.

Use evidence from the poems to support your comparison.

(20)

Question 3

20 marks

Read the two poems and answer Question 12.

Break, Break, Break

1Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
5O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
10To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
15But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

‘Break, Break, Break’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842).

Glossary: haven: harbour.

The Old Familiar Faces

1I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
5Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
10I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,
15Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces—
How some they have died, and some they have left me,
20And some are taken from me; all are departed—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

‘The Old Familiar Faces’ by Charles Lamb (1798).

Glossary: carousing: drinking and partying; cronies: close friends; ingrate: an ungrateful person; wert: were.

Compare the ways the writers present loss in ‘Break, Break, Break’ and ‘The Old Familiar Faces’.

In your answer you should compare the:

  • ideas in the poems
  • poets’ use of language
  • poets’ use of form and structure.

Use evidence from the poems to support your comparison.

(20)

Question 4

20 marks

Read the two poems and answer Question 12.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

1I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
5And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
10I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by W. B. Yeats (1890).

Glossary: Innisfree: a small island in a lake in County Sligo, Ireland; wattles: woven sticks used to make walls; glade: an open space in a wood; linnet: a small songbird.

To S. R. Crockett

1Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!
5Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:
Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
10Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.

‘To S. R. Crockett’ by Robert Louis Stevenson (1896).

Glossary: S. R. Crockett: a Scottish novelist, a friend of the poet; Stevenson wrote this in Samoa, far from Scotland; martyrs: Scottish Presbyterians killed for their faith in the 1600s; whaups: curlews (moorland birds); recumbent: lying flat; howes: hollows or burial mounds; peewees: lapwings (moorland birds).

Compare the ways the writers present a place that is important to them in ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ and ‘To S. R. Crockett’.

In your answer you should compare the:

  • ideas in the poems
  • poets’ use of language
  • poets’ use of form and structure.

Use evidence from the poems to support your comparison.

(20)

Question 5

20 marks

Read the two poems and answer Question 12.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

1I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
5Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
10Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
15A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
For oft, when on my couch I lie
20In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ by William Wordsworth (1807, revised 1815).

Glossary: vales: valleys; jocund: cheerful; pensive: thoughtful.

A Bird Came Down the Walk

1A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
5And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
10That hurried all abroad, —
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
15And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
20Leap, splashless, as they swim.

‘A Bird Came Down the Walk’ by Emily Dickinson (c. 1862, published 1891).

Glossary: angle-worm: an earthworm; sidewise: sideways.

Compare the ways the writers present an encounter with nature in ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and ‘A Bird Came Down the Walk’.

In your answer you should compare the:

  • ideas in the poems
  • poets’ use of language
  • poets’ use of form and structure.

Use evidence from the poems to support your comparison.

(20)

Question 6

20 marks

Read the two poems and answer Question 12.

Futility

1Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
5Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
10Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

‘Futility’ by Wilfred Owen (1918).

Glossary: fatuous: foolish, pointless.

Drummer Hodge

1They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
5And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—
Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
10The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
15His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up a Southern tree.
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

‘Drummer Hodge’ by Thomas Hardy (1899).

Glossary: Drummer Hodge: a young English drummer killed in the Boer War in South Africa; kopje-crest: the top of a small hill (a South African word); veldt: open grassland in South Africa; Karoo: a dry plateau in South Africa; loam: soil; gloam: twilight.

Compare the ways the writers present the death of a young soldier in ‘Futility’ and ‘Drummer Hodge’.

In your answer you should compare the:

  • ideas in the poems
  • poets’ use of language
  • poets’ use of form and structure.

Use evidence from the poems to support your comparison.

(20)