Passages

Question 1

I have sene theil gentill tame and meke
That nowe are wyld and do not remembre
that sometyme they put theimself in daunger
To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge.

Answer 1

They fle from me that sometyme did me seke, Sir Thomas Wyatt

Question 2

Come live with mee, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Vallies, groves, hills and fieldes,
Woods, or steepie mountaine yeeldes.

Answer 2

The Passionate Sheepheard to his Love, Christopher Marlowe

Question 3

The flowers doe fade, and wanton fieldes,
To wayward winter reckoning yeeldes,
A honny tongue, a hart of gall,
Is fancies spring, but sorrowes fall.

Answer 3

The Nimph’s Reply to the Sheepheard, Sir Walter Ralegh

Question 4

Who will in fairest booke of Nature know,

How Vertue may bedt lodg’d in beautie be,

Answer 4

Astrophil and Stella #71, Sir Philip Sidney

Question 5

Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie.
And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:

Answer 5

Sonnet 18, Shakespeare

Question 6

My Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,
Curral(coral) is far more red, then her lips red,
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:

Answer 6

Sonnet 130, Shakespeare

Question 7

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where wee almost, yea more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is

Answer 7

The Flea, John Donne

Question 8

my vegetable love should grow
vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.

Answer 8

To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell

Question 9

The muses are turned gossips; they have lost
the buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase,
language of gods. come then, domestic Muse
in slipshod measure loosely prattling on

Answer 9

Washing Day, Barbauld

Question 10

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

Answer 10

London, William Blake

Question 11

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Answer 11

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 - William Wordsworth

Question 12

My heart aches, and drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and the Lethe-wards had sunk:

Answer 12

Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats

Question 13

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

Answer 13

A Musical Instrument, Browning

Question 14

A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,
too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Answer 14

My Last Duchess, Robert Browning

Question 15

I am a poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

Answer 15

from Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

Question 16

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.

Answer 16

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, Whitman

Question 17

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons–
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes–

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us–
we can find no scar,
but internal difference,
where the meanings, are–

Answer 17

258: There’s a certain slant of light, Emily Dickinson

Question 18

because I could not stop for Death–
he kindly stopped for me–
the carriage held but just Ourselves–
And Immortality–

Answer 18

712: Because I could not stop for Death, Dickinson

Question 19

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

Answer 19

Pied Beauty, Hopkins

Question 20

Slowly, furtively, till my eyes
grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,

And the hair of my neck began to creep
At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.

Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.
In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.

And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,
From the white, inviolate solitude.

Answer 20

The Skater, Charles Roberts

Question 21

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,
In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

Answer 21

Marshlands, Johnson

Question 22

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:

Answer 22

Mending Wall, Robert Frost

Question 23

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Answer 23

In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound

Question 24

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Answer 24

The Red Wheelbarrow, Williams

Question 25

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Answer 25

This is Just to Say, Williams

Question 26

A wild duck calls
to her mate,
and the ragged
and passionate tones
stagger and fall,
and recover,
and stagger and fall,
on these stones--
are lost
in the lapping of water
on smooth, flat stones.

Answer 26

The Lonely Land, Smith

Question 27

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
but for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
as it had to on the white kegs disappearing into the green

Answer 27

Musee des Beaux Arts, Auden

Question 28

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

Answer 28

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Williams

Question 29

and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) “Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.” I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

Answer 29

14 from The Dream Songs, Berryman

Question 30

and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he’s taking it, which he sought so hard
we’ll tear it apart
the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start

Answer 30

384 from The Dream Songs, Berryman

Question 31

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

Answer 31

Black Rook in Rainy Weather, Plath

Question 32

I have not held my breath 
so that I might hear the breathing of God,
or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise,
or starved for visions.
Although I have watched him often
I have not become the heron,
leaving my body on the shore,
and I have not become the luminous trout,
leaving my body in the air.

Answer 32

I have Not Lingered in European Monasteries, Cohen

Question 33

year curves to ending now
and thous dost say me, wife
I choose another love, and oh
the delicate, delicate serpent of your mouth
stings deep, and bitter
iron cuts and shapes
my death, I was so fool.

Answer 33

Thou Didst Say Me, Waddington

Question 34

the uneaten
meals and unslept
sleep; there was
retirement, and
worst of all
a green umbrella
he can never
take back.

Answer 34

Ten Years and More, Waddington

Question 35

dear walt
is it ever possible to escape
metaphor or change a democracy
whose foundation digs into the bones of her original people
i would like to know walt
if there is a place for dead poets
where we can lie among leaves of grass
then laugh at how little has changed

Answer 35

dear walt, Connie Fife

Question 36

how can we help but keep hearing his voice,
the flip side of the sound track, still playing:
“Come on, boys, we got them
where we want them, drunk, running.
They’ll give us what we want, what we need.”
Even his disease was the idea of taking everything.
Those cells, burning, doubling, splitting out of their skins.

Answer 36

Dear John Wayne, Eldrich

Question 37

so mek dem send one big word after me
i ent serving no jail sentence
i slashing suffix in self-defence
i bashing future wit present tense
and if necessary
i making de Queen's English accessory/ to my offence

Answer 37

Listen Mr Oxford Don, John Agard

Question 38

So it was Prospero's turn 
to put the kettle on
and pour a pot for two.
they talked of weather, inflation,
immigration, poll tax,
but never got around
to the matter of Sycorax
for that roots-woman was taboo
and familiarity
breeds familiars
like black cats and spiders
embodied out of thin air ...

Answer 38

How Aunti Nansi Reshuffled Prospero’s Books, Agard

Question 39

in the meantime rose can play games with trolls and
witches. her prince will tolerate it as long as
she doesn’t cross him. as long as her game
doesn’t interfere with his

Answer 39

Sex and Politics in Fairyland, Wanda Coleman

Question 40

if clothes make the girl, they make the boys cry out for a heart ringed in Valentine lace. I have hundreds, will drop one in your mail. But first you must take me out to dinner, as is done; for what’s paradise without protocol?

Answer 40

Flashpoint, Karen Solie