SAT II Literature : Tone, Style, and Mood: Seventeenth-Century Poetry
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for SAT II Literature
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Example Questions
Example Question #3 : Genre, Style, Tone, Mood, And Other Literary Features
Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14)
1 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
2 As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
3 That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
4 Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
5 I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
6 Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
7 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
8 But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
9 Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
10 But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
11 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
12 Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
13 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
14 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The tone of this sonnet is best described as .
temperate
patient
sensual
disembodied
humble
sensual
The tone of this sonnet, with its call for divine ravishing and violence, can best be described as sensual.
Example Question #2 : Tone, Style, And Mood
The speaker believes that ________________ is the only way to immortalize oneself against the passage of time.
getting married
being beautiful
planting crops
having children
having children
The word "breed" in line 14 "Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence" refers to a man having children. "To brave him" is to defy time itself, "him" here referring to "Time" in line 13. "When he takes thee hence" is a metaphor for death, meaning "when time takes you away."
Example Question #2 : Tone, Style, And Mood: 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 speaker’s tone is best described as _______________.
Obsequious
Despotic
Whimsical
Rhapsodic
Indolent
Rhapsodic
The speaker's extravagant and sustained metaphors for love indicate a sense of celebration and enthusiasm. The poem is a kind of rhapsody about love.
While the speaker is certainly devoted to the idea of love, he imagines that love as equal, so "obsequious" doesn't fit. And while the speaker also mediates on the idea of "fancies," he ultimately sees these as inferior to the love he's now achieved; "whimsical," therefore, doesn't fit either.
Passage adapted from John Donne's "The Good Morrow" (1633).
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