poetry

Question 1

Three quotes from La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Answer 1

1. “The sedge has withered from the lake” -withered suggests winter(a brutal and cold season)
2. “Alone and palely loitering?”
   -verb loitering = knight has no purpose, unlike other knights
3. “I saw pale Knights, princes too, Pale warriors”
   -suggests all her victims

Question 2

Three quotes from A child to his grandfather

Answer 2

1.”they say you’re old and frail”
-signifying age, and how the child hasnt realised “they say”
2.”..hangs down! Scant are the white hairs on your crown; How wan and hollow are your cheeks!”
-lexical field of “scant”, “wan” and “hollow” of frailty, near death, description of old age
3.”about a partlet and her brood, and cunning greedy fox that stole”
-fox - metaphor for death, steals brood and her hen like death will to the father

Question 3

3 quotes from A complaint

Answer 3

1.”there is a change – and i am poor”
-suggests losing something of value, caesura = hesitant speech suggests heaviness and grief.
2.”whose only business was to flow;”
-“only”-suggesting only his friend devoted himself to Wordsworth - having flow at the end with punctuation emphasising the word
3.”A comfortless and hidden well”
-now the love becomes a hidden well - the love has changed becomes sad, in darkness

Question 4

three quotes from sonnet 43

Answer 4

1.”how do i love thee? let me count the ways”
-a rhetorical question that she answers herself - hypophoria - other part - childlike, innocence, ease the reader gently into something that will eventually develop into a declaration of adult passion
2.”i love thee”
- repeated nine times - anaphora - the implication that she overwhelmed by her feelings
3.”i shall but love thee better after death”
-poet expresses that they can love in heaven - real of eternality unlike earth and temporary love. inverts to wedding vows “till death do us part” - that death will end earthly love; hers will last forever

Question 5

three quotes from last duchess

Answer 5

1.”thats my last duchess painted on the wall”
-“last”- adjective - making her sound less important - doesnt seem valuable to him - hes controlling -“painted on the wall” - possessive pronoun - objectifying her
2.”since none puts by the curtain i have draw for you, but i”
-enjambment - conversation like - he seems proud of his controlling nature - later on he talks about how he doesnt like how her face is seen by others - after death he can control her - devil like
3.”much the same smile? this grew; i gave commands; then all smiles stopped together”
-“same smiles”- she was innocent thats all she did, smile - thats what he wanted gone - sibilance - “s” sound - hissing - related to devil - snake in the original sin story

Question 6

four quotes from nettles

Answer 6

1.”the nettle bed”
-oxymoron “bed” -comfort and relaxing “nettles” pain and stinging - the nettles as we learn throughout the poem is a metaphor for the griefs and pressures that life will present the child in the future
2.”slashed in fury” and “fierce parade”
-lexical field of military, the plants are metaphor for soldiers. “slashed” - onomatopoeic slash imitating for slashing sounds of a weapon
3. “my son would often feel sharp wounds again”
-final metaphor is finally resolved, the pain of life as symbolised by the nettles, will return and the child will “often feel sharp wounds again”

Question 7

3 quotes from neutral tones

Answer 7

1.”and a few leaves lay on the starving sod”
- “few leaves” symbolises the relationship, spring = leaves full of life, winter = dead/dying
2.”the smile on your mouth was the deadest thing”
- “deadest thing” = shes become emotionless, no longer loves the narrator
3.”god curst sun”
- God almost seems complicit in this failed relationship.

Question 8

4 quotes from one flesh

Answer 8

1.”lying apart now”
- “now”= suggests they once lay close, that their married life has changed.
2.”He with a book…girl dreaming of childhood”
- hint of old age; it is usually in one’s last years that memories of childhood become more vivid
3.”little feeling - or too much”
-‘little feeling’ deepens the mood of sadness, caesura, before the even sadder ‘too much’, suggests they feel greif for the state of their relationship.
4.”Do they know they’re old?”
- suggests that time has slipped by and it is easy not to notice the fact, not to notice the falling away of passion.