PART B: POETRYTotal Value: 21 marks Suggested Time: 21 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Read the poem ³Channel Firing² and answer the questions on pages 3 through 5 in the Response Booklet. Select the best answer for each multiple-choice question and record your choice on the Response Form provided. Follow instructions for paragraph-response question carefully, and write your answer in the space provided in the Response Booklet.
³CHANNEL FIRING² (APRIL, 1914)BY THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)
That night, your great guns, unawares,1
Shook all our coffins 1 as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment Day.4
And sat upright. While drearisome5
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds.8
The glebe 2 cow drooled. Till God called, "No;9
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:12
"All nations striving strong to make13
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés 3 sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.16
"That this is not the judgment hour17
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening . . . .20
"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when21
I blow the trumpet 4 (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."24
OVER.
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So down we lay again. "I wonder,25
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under27
In our indifferent century!"
And many a skeleton shook his head.29
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."32
Again the guns disturbed the hour,33
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower. 5
And Camelot, 6 and starlit Stonehenge. 736
Notes
1 It has been common practice in England for hundreds of years to bury the dead under the floors or in the basements (crypts) of village churches and cathedrals.
2 A parcel of land adjoining and belonging to the local church is the "glebe." Cows were grazed there to keep the grass short.
3 Before Shakespeare's time, the possessive form of most singular nouns ended in "es" rather than the modern "'s." In the countryside, this old-fashioned possessive continued in use well into the eighteenth century.
4 According to Judeo-Christian and Arab traditions, at the end of time God will command the angel Gabriel to blow a great trumpet to signal the Last Judgment. This will follow the ultimate destruction of the world, when God will judge each soul as good or evil, and pronounce its salvation or its doom (see "Revelation" 20: 11-15 in the Bible).
5 Stourton Tower commemorates King Alfred the Great's defeat of the Viking invaders in A.D. 879.
6 Camelot is the legendary location of the court of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
7 Stonehenge is a group of gigantic stones on Salisbury Plain, probably built as a temple to the Sun and Moon between 2500 and 1000 B. C.
OVER.
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PART B: POETRY‹³CHANNEL FIRING² (APRIL, 1914)BY THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)Total Value: 18 marks Suggested Time: 21 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Read the poem ³Channel Firing² on pages 1 and 2 in the Readings Booklet. Select the best answer for each multiple-choice question and record your choice on the Response Form provided.
Section One (9 marks‹one mark per question)
11. The speaker (character talking) in the first two stanzas (lines 1 through 8) is likely
A. God.
B. Parson Thirdly.
C. Thomas Hardy himself.
D. an unnamed dead person.
12. The poem's tone in stanzas three through six (lines 9 through 24) is
A. ironic and cynical.
B. whistful and nostalgic.
C. joyful and exuberant.
D. hopeful and sympathetic.
13. The scene described in stanzas one and two involves
A. soldiers billeted in a church waking up for target practice.
B. God's blowing the trumpet to signal the Day of Judgment.
C. the awakening of the dead by a stray shell from a battleship.
D. creatures living in a church being startled by a naval battle in the Channel.
14. Words such as "drearisome" (5)," howl" (6),"hounds" (6)," worms" (8), and "mounds" (8) create what kind of mood?
A. weird and macabre.
B. cheerful and boyant.
C. pessimistic and bitter.
D. detached and unemotional.
15. The periods in lines 5 and 9 indicate
A. iambs.
B. spondees.
C. caesuras.
D. internal rhymes.
OVER.
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16. Parson Thirdly wishes that instead of preaching he "had stuck to pipes and beer" (32) because
A. forty years of sermons apparently did nothing to improve humanity.
B. he was a successful home-brewer and bagpiper, but a failure as a priest.
C. despite his anti-war preachments, his parishioners have continued to fight.
D. only in drinking and comraderie do people forget about their sorrows and wrongs.
17. The ultimate contrast in the poem that points to Hardy's theme is between the
A. painful knowledge of the dead and the utter ignorance of the living.
B. disturbed cow, mouse, and hounds, and the philosophically detached soldiers.
C. church being blown up by naval artillery and the dead sitting up in their coffins.
D. image of the vengeful angels punishing humanity and a forgiving God restraining them.
18. Hardy believes that war is pointlessly destructive, no matter what its justification; he conveys this belief in the following line:
A. "Arose the howl of wakened hounds" (6).
B. "And many a skeleton shook his head" (29).
C. "for you are men, / And rest ternal sorely need)" (23-24).
D. "Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters / They do no more for Christés sake . . ." (14-15).
19. This poem is an example of
Score for
A. an ode.Section One:
B. a ballad.
C. a sonnet.1.
D. a dramatic monologue.(9)
WRITE IN INK
"Channel Firing" (April, 1914) by Thomas Hardy
(pages 1-2 in the Readings Booklet)
INSTRUCTIONS: In full sentences form, answer question 1 in the space provided. Write in ink. The mark for your answer will be based on the appropriate-ness of the example(s) you use as well as the adequacy of your explanation and the quality of your written expression.
OVER.
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Section Two (9 marks)
1. The voices in this poem offer three perspectives about the human condition. In com-plete sentences, quote to show that the poet has employed these three different voices to offer three different views about humanity and its problems, identifying each voice (character). (6 marks) Up to three marks will be awarded for the quality of your written expression.
First voice:. (one mark)
Views:
. (one mark)
Second voice:. (one mark)
Views:
. (one mark)
Third voice:. (one mark)
Views:
. (one mark)
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³CHANNEL FIRING² (APRIL, 1914)
BY THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)
That night, your great guns, unawares,1
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment Day.4
And sat upright. While drearisome5
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds.8
The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;9
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:12
"All nations striving strong to make13
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.16
"That this is not the judgment hour17
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening . . . .20
"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when21
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."24
So down we lay again. "I wonder,25
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under27
In our indifferent century!"
And many a skeleton shook his head.29
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."32
Again the guns disturbed the hour,33
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower.
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. 36