GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification of British Poetry to 1660
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Identification Of British Poetry To 1660
May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs.
These lines, originally written in Old English, are from an eleventh-century poem about a man sailing alone and his relationship to God. From which of the following poems is this passage taken?
The Seafarer
Pyramus and Thisbe
Beowulf
The Wanderer
The Canterbury Tales
The Seafarer
Translated by Ezra Pound, these are the opening lines of the anonymous 11th-century poem The Seafarer. The first-person poem appears in the Exeter Book, a canonical anthology of early poetry.
Passage adapted from The Seafarer l.1-8 (trans. Pound 1911)
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