Mr. Siuda
McQuaid Jesuit High School, 2014-2015
Sophomore Adv. English
A.M.D.G
Poetry Worksheet #1
Please read the following poems and then answer the relevant questions in the space provided. Your answers should be as clear and detailed as possible, and written in complete sentences.
A.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
--William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
boon=gift
lea=a pasture, here overlooking the sea
Proteus=a Greek sea god capable of assuming many forms
Triton=a son of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon
1. Please mark out the rhyme scheme on the poem above. Which type of sonnet is this?
2. Wordsworth wrote this poem at the beginning of the English Industrial Revolution. Given that, in the poem’s first eight lines, the speaker explains that he fears the people of his day are spending too much of their time doing what? Furthermore, because of this, they are becoming more distant from what? Finally, what might the consequences of that distance be?
3. What does it mean to be a “pagan suckled in a creed outworn”? Furthermore, why do you think that Wordsworth uses the word “suckled” rather than the part of the line being “raised in creed outworn” or “taught a creed outworn” (ignoring the fact that Wordsworth needs a two-syllable word in that spot)?
4. How would this “pagan” look at the world? Why would the speaker prefer to see the world in this way?
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B.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as though art—
Not in lone splendor hung aloft in night,
And, watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable.
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast.
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath.
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
--John Keats (1795-1821)
stedfast=older form of steadfast, to be loyal
eremite=a hermit or religious recluse
ablution= the washing of one's body or part of it (as in a religious rite)
1. Please mark out the rhyme scheme on the poem above. What type of sonnet is this?
2. The speaker spends the first eight lines of the poem saying the he would like be sort of like a steadfast star.
(a) How is star a good example of steadfastness?
(b) What two jobs does he give the star to do?
(c) What quality does he give the “moving waters” when he compares what they are doing to the “priestlike task/of pure ablution”?
(d) How is snow like “a mask”?
(e) Even though the speaker would like to emulate the steadfastness of this star, why does he not want to be this exact star?
2. Describe the scene laid out in the final six line of the poem. Additionally, why does he describe the state of unrest that he is in as “sweet”?
3. Given that in line one of the poem, the speaker says, “would I were as stedfast” as thou art, what might we suspect the speaker has done? Is is fair to say that he now regrets this act? Why?