AP English Comparison Sets I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, Emily Dickinson I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm. The eyes beside had wrung them dry, And breaths were gathering sure For that last onset, when the king Be witnessed in his power. I willed my keepsakes, signed away What portion of me I Could make assignable,-and then There interposed a fly, With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see. Do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 1. What was expected to happen when the King was witnessed? What happened instead? 2. Analyze the literary devices that contribute to the tone (pay special attention to diction, imagery, syntax). 3. What is the effect of the last line? Why not end the poem with I could not see instead of the additional to see? 4. What poetic form does this poem take? How does the form help reinforce the theme? 5. How does the universal become personal in the concluding quatrain? Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Sonnet XIV John Donne Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new. I, like an usurpt town, to another due, 5 Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end, Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy: 10 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 6. Mark the rhyme scheme 7. Clarify how the sonnet s structure organizes the meaning of the poem. 8. Determine the tone of the sonnet. 9. Analyze the literary devices that contribute to the tone (pay special attention to diction, metaphor/simile, apostrophe, and hyperbole) 10. Clarify the speaker s relationship to God. The Windhover 1 Gerard Manley Hopkins To Christ Our Lord I caught this morning morning s minion 2, kingdom of daylight s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ectasy! then off, off on swing, 5 As a skate s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here Buckle! 3 AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion 10 Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion 4 Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. 1 A name for the kestrel [small kind of falcon], from its habit of hovering or hanging with its head to the wind 2 favorite 3 To join, to equip for battle, to crumple 4 furrow 11. What does the speaker see? 12. What is his reaction to it? 13. How does alliteration, assonance, consonance, and changes in rhythm help reinforce the imagery in this poem? 14. Clarify the speaker s relationship to God.
Choose Something Like a Star Robert Frost O Star (the fairest one in sight), We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud -- It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. 5 Some mystery becomes the proud. But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed. Say something to us we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. 10 Say something! And it says "I burn." But say with what degree of heat. Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade. Use language we can comprehend. Tell us what elements you blend. 15 It gives us strangely little aid, But does tell something in the end. And steadfast as Keats' Eremite, Not even stooping from its sphere, It asks a little of us here. 20 It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid. 25 Bright Star John Keats Bright Star, would I were as stedfast as thou art Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at the priestlike task 5 Of pure ablution round the earth s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow d upon my fair love s ripening breast, 10 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever or else swoon to death. 15. Like Keats, Frost chooses the image of a star as the subject of his meditations. How does Frost treat the remoteness of the star? 16. Frost refers to Keats (see below) explicitly in stanza 3. What effect does this have on Frost s poem? 17. There s a play on words at the end- Explain. 18. What poetic devices are used in the form or structure of this poem? 19. Mark the rhyme scheme 20. Clarify how the sonnet s structure organizes the meaning of the poem. 21. Determine the tone of the sonnet. 22. Analyze the literary devices that contribute to the tone (pay special attention to diction, metaphor/simile, apostrophe, and hyperbole) 23. Clarify the speaker s relationship to the subject
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner Randall Jarrell From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. "A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two.50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." -- Jarrell's note. Dulce et Decorum Est 1 Wilfred Owen Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 5 But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; 10 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, 15 He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 24. The poem was published in 1945. Why is that relevant to its meaning? 25. What figurative language is used here to develop the speaker s intent? 26. This poem was published at the end of WWI. Compare the emotions present to the previous poem. Go stanza by stanza to analyze shifts in rhythm, imagery, and purpose. 27. How is the tone developed by Owen? Look at each stanza. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 20 If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 25 To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. 8 October 1917 - March, 1918 1 DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country..
Acquainted with the Night Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. 28. How does Frost use night both figurative and symbolically in this poem? I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat 5 And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; 10 And further still at an unearthly height, A luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. As I Walked Out One Evening W.H. Auden As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. 29. What are some other conventional symbols in this poem? How do they help contribute to the meaning of the poem? 30. What is the setting of this poem? 5 And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: Love has no ending. I'll love you, dear, I'll love you 10 Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, 31. What is the tone of the lover? What do you notice about the imagery? I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry 15 And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, 20 And the first love of the world. But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
25 In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss. 32. Who is our new speaker? What literary devices are used here? In headaches and in worry 30 Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day. Into many a green valley Drifts the appalling snow; 35 Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver's brilliant bow. O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin 40 And wonder what you've missed. 33. How do contrasting images work here to form a theme? The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead. 45 Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer, And Jill goes down on her back. O look, look in the mirror? 50 O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless. 34. How does the poet s use of symbol, imagery, and personification contribute to the tone and meaning of the poem? O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; 55 You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart. It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, 60 And the deep river ran on.
i carry your heart by e.e. cummings i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear 5 no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you 35. What is unusual about the way the syntax (sentence structure) is presented in this poem? What does the use of parentheses add to the poem? 36. How do imagery and syntax work together to convey the tone and theme of this poem? here is the deepest secret nobody knows 10 (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart. i carry it in my heart. Sonnet 116 William Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments 1. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove 2 : O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark 3 5 That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken 4. Love's not Time's fool 5, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass 6 come: 10 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom 7. If this be error and upon 8 me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 1 echoing the traditional marriage service 2 or abandons the relationship when the loved one is unfaithful or has departed or died, or when time ( the remover ) alters things for the worse. 3 An unmoving sea mark, such as a lighthouse or a beacon, which provides a constant reference point for sailors. 4 The stars (great) intrinsic value cannot be assessed, although navigators at sea can measure height above the horizon. 5 plaything 6 Within range of time s curved (and hostile) scythe. Compass also recalls the imagery of the second quatrain. 7 But endures to till the eve of doomsday 37. The second quatrain in some ways clarifies the first. What contrasts are present? What is the purpose of the two quatrains? 38. What is the unifying imagery in the third quatrain? 39. What is the effect of the couplet? 40. How does the tone, imagery and form work together to support the theme? 8 against
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 5 Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 10 At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago 15 Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 20 The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 25 Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, 30 So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain 35 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. 41. This poem has a consistent rhyme scheme but an inconsistent meter. Try scanning the first stanza. What is the dominant foot of meter? 42. What other types of feet do you find? How does this relate to the images in the poem? 43. What is the tone of this poem? Where do you see shifts? 44. Who is the speaker addressing? What response does he seem to want? The Dover Bitch (A Criticism of Life) Anthony Hecht So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them, And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me, And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad All over, etc., etc.' 5 Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read Sophocles in a fairly good translation And caught that bitter allusion to the sea, But all the time he was talking she had in mind The notion of what his whiskers would feel like 10 On the back of her neck. She told me later on That after a while she got to looking out At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad, Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds And blandishments in French and the perfumes. 15 And then she got really angry. To have been brought All the way down from London, and then be addressed As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty. Anyway, she watched him pace the room 20 And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit, And then she said one or two unprintable things. But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is, She's really all right. I still see her once in a while And she always treats me right. We have a drink 25 And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year Before I see her again, but there she is, Running to fat, but dependable as they come. And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour. 15-18 Sophocles misery: in Antigone, Sophocles likens the disasters that beset the house of Oedipus to a mounting tide. 28: Pebble beaches