The novel in question is Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, which concerns a love triangle between a shepherd, a wealthy farmer, and a young woman named Bathsheba.

Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)

An "epitaph" is a written commemoration of a person’s life, often on a gravestone. Even if you didn’t know how the poem ended, an epitaph would be the most logical choice to end this poem. An "epigraph" is a short quotation (usually presented at the beginning of a novel or other published work), an "epigram" is a short or witty saying, an "epistle" is a letter, and an "epicure" is someone who appreciates fine food and beverages. The particular epitaph at the end of this poem memorializes a poet who died with his work unknown, an insight into Gray’s own views of his work.

Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)

This is Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock. Belinda is one of the main characters of this work.

Passage adapted from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, I.1-12 (1712; ed. 1906)

This poem is based on the true story of two noble families in England during Pope’s lifetime. The inspiration for the poem occurred when a male suitor of one family cut off a lock of hair from a woman (named Belinda in the poem) of the other family without her permission. Pope uses his extensive powers of hyperbole, the mock-heroic form, and classical allusions to satirize this incident and blow it entirely out of proportion.

Passage adapted from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, I.1-12 (1712; ed. 1906)

Conrad Aiken is known for openly criticizing Loy’s poetry. All the others were affiliated with Mina Loy in some way – most through her Greenwich Village ties.

The Whitsun Weddings was first published in 1964. Philip Larkin was born in 1922 and died in 1985, which rules out a few of the answer choices.

Ted Hughes wrote The Iron Man (1968), The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Crow (1970), and Winter Pollen (1994). Candles in Babylon is a 1982 collection by the British-born American humanist poet Denise Levertov.

Knowing that this was Hughes’ last work of poetry, and knowing that he lived from 1930 to 1998, you could have inferred that Birthday Letters was published in the 1990s (1998, to be precise).

British artist, poet, playwright, actress, and lamp designer Mina Loy wrote The Lost Lunar Baedeker (1923) and Insel (1914).

Mina Loy’s poetry and fiction are known for their futurist, feminist leanings as well as their emphases on the avant-garde and the bohemian life-style. Her work was not bourgeois – conventional, middle-class, or materialistic – in any way.