GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification of American Poetry Before 1925
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
Example Question #33 : Identification Of Poetry
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes— the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
What other famous line appears in a later version of the same poem?
"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink"
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by"
"Hope is the thing with feathers"
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1834 version), “Hope is the thing with feathers” is from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name published in 1891, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by” is from Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (1916), and “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnet 43" (1850).
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes" was taken from the 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass.
Passage adapted from "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, ln.1-8 (1855)
Example Question #31 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes— the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
What other poem appears in the same volume as this one?
“Paul Revere’s Ride”
“A Choice”
“I Sing the Body Electric”
"I wandered lonely as a cloud"
“The Raven”
“I Sing the Body Electric”
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe was first published in 1845. “A Choice” by Paul Laurence Dunbar was first published in 1913. "I wandered lonely as a cloud" by William Wordsworth was first published in 1807. “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was first published in 1860.
Passage adapted from "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, ln.1-8 (1855) "I Sing the Body Electric" was published in the same volume.
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