All SAT II Literature Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #821 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
Passage adapted from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Spring" (1921).
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know. 5
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify? 10
Not only under the ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. 15
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
This poem is an example of __________.
a villanelle
iambic tetrameter
blank verse
free verse
a ballad
free verse
This poem is written in free verse because it does not use a consistent meter or rhyme scheme. "Blank verse" refers to unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. "A ballad" is a poem set to music, often narrative in its content. "A villanelle" consists of nineteen lines (five tercets and a quatrain) with a repeating rhyme structure. "Iambic tetrameter" refers to a form of meter that consists of four beats ("tetra") in the iambic foot.
Example Question #21 : Excerpt Purpose In Context
Adapted from "Old Man Traveling" by William Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798 ed.)
The little hedge-row birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought—He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten, one to whom
Long patience has such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing, of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the old man hardly feels.
—I asked him whither he was bound, and what
The object of his journey; he replied
"Sir! I am going many miles to take
"A last leave of my son, a mariner,
"Who from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth,
And there is dying in an hospital."
The juxtaposition of the man's calmness and the information he gives the speaker in the last four underlined lines shows __________.
that the man has reached a level of peace where he can confront even harsh facts
that outliving your children is the epitome of futility
that the man is incapable of strong emotions
that grief can be so great it can make a person completely unresponsive
that there is no point in having strong emotions after the death of a son
that the man has reached a level of peace where he can confront even harsh facts
We must infer from the information given to us by the speaker what the juxtaposition shows us. There is nothing to suggest, from the small amount of information, that the man cannot experience strong emotions, and the fact that the narrator punctuates the poem with the man's son's death shows he wants to emphasize that strong emotions probably should accompany the death of a son. We know the narrator does not want us to consider futility as he or she is full of praise for the old man. We also know the old man is most certainly not unresponsive as he is willing to engage with the speaker. So, we can conclude that the man has reached a level of peace where he can be stoic in the face of death or where his oneness with the world prevents him from falling into hysterics.
Example Question #21 : Structure And Form
Passage adapted from "Poetry" by Marianne Moore (1919)
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Considering the title, which word best describes the initial tone of this poem?
Ironic
Pedantic
Contemptuous
Cynical
Ironic
The tone is ironic because of the poem's context. The author describes her distaste for the "fiddle" of poetry in a poem, giving an almost satirical critique of the form and its cultural context. If the author's opinion about poetry were plain, uncomplicated, and unironic, we would expect her to write her analysis of poetry in a different form.
Example Question #22 : Structure And Form
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem is an example of which poetic form?
Limerick
Sonnet
Sestina
Epic
Sonnet
A sonnet loosely defined as any poem of exactly fourteen lines, with various subtypes. This poem, by William Shakespeare, is an example of a Shakespearean sonnet. It is written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABAB (end-rhymes every other line) until the final couplet, which rhymes CC (two lines rhymed back-to-back).
Passage adapted from Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" (1609)
Example Question #23 : Structure And Form: Poetry
1 Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
2 Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
3 From hence your memory death cannot take,
4 Although in me each part will be forgotten.
5 Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
6 Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
7 The earth can yield me but a common grave,
8 When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
9 Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
10 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
11 And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
12 When all the breathers of this world are dead;
13 You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
14 Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
(1609)
This type of poem is a ___________________.
terza rima
ballad
Shakespearean sonnet
villanelle
Petrarchan sonnnet
Shakespearean sonnet
This poem is in fact a Shakespearean sonnet, which is obvious because it fulfills all the requirements of a Shakespearean sonnet:
It has fourteen lines.
It is written in iambic pentameter.
It is written in some way on the topic of love.
It has the following rhyme scheme: ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GG.
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 80" (1609)
Example Question #24 : Structure And Form: Poetry
To the Dead in the Grave-Yard Under My Window
by Adelaide Crapsey (1878 - 1915)
- How can you lie so still? All day I watch
- And never a blade of all the green sod moves
- To show where restlessly you toss and turn,
- And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees
- Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;
- I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth
- To take its freedom of the midnight hour.
- Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?
- The very worms must scorn you where you lie,
- A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk,
- Meek habitants of unresented graves.
- Why are you there in your straight row on row
- Where I must ever see you from my bed
- That in your mere dumb presence iterate
- The text so weary in my ears: “Lie still
- And rest; be patient and lie still and rest.”
- I’ll not be patient! I will not lie still!
The meter of the poem serves to emphasize _______________.
the speaker’s religious faith
the poem’s allegorical meaning
the speaker’s reverence for the dead
the speaker’s rigidly limited circumstances
the emptiness of the speaker’s existence
the speaker’s rigidly limited circumstances
The poem is in blank verse: a relatively regular meter that emphasizes the speaker's straitened life circumstances. Instead of "rebelling" and bursting out into free verse, the speaker is constrained by the even rhythm of iambic pentameter.
There is no textual evidence for the other answer choices. There is no suggestion that the speaker is religious, or that she feels reverence for the dead; the poem is not an allegory; the speaker's existence may be empty, but there's no clear connection between that and the sound of blank verse.
Example Question #22 : Structure And Form
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
(1794)
Which of the following best describes the form of the poem?
A sestina
6 stanzas with end rhyme
A sonnet
A villanelle
A free verse poem
6 stanzas with end rhyme
The poem has a specific structure, with lines that end in rhyme. The poem is not a sonnet, villanelle, or sestina, as it does not contain the repetition of certain words or phrases. The poem is also divided into 6 stanzas.
Passage adapted from William Blake's "The Tyger" (1794)
Example Question #23 : Structure And Form
(1789)
What is the effect of the rhyme structure of the poem?
It illustrates that the children enjoy their work and treat it like it's playtime
None of these
It juxtaposes the harsh work of child chimney-sweepers with the innocent sound of a children's nursery rhyme
It symbolizes that the children are going to heaven
It draws a parallel between angelic songs and the work of the chimney-sweepers
It juxtaposes the harsh work of child chimney-sweepers with the innocent sound of a children's nursery rhyme
This is the correct answer because the actual content of the poem is very dark- children laboring as chimney sweepers- but the fact that the harsh work is being done by children is juxtaposed with the reality that they're still only old enough to be learning nursery rhymes.
Passage adapted from William Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789).
Example Question #23 : Structure And Form: Poetry
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
(1633)
The meter used in these lines is __________.
None of these
Iambic pentameter
Iambic hexameter
Syllabic
Trochaic pentameter
Iambic pentameter
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
The meter is stressed-unstressed (iambic), and each line contains five feet (pentameter).
Passage adapted from John Donne's "The Good Morrow" (1633).
Example Question #23 : Structure And Form: Poetry
This type of poem is a(n) ________________.
parody
ode
sonnet
Petrarchan sonnet
ballad
ode
The form and content of this poem reveal it to be an ode. The form of an ode is a lyric poem of considerable length. The content of an ode is usually praise of something delivered in a serious and elevated tone.
Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)