•  Write an essay in which you compare and contrast “Pied Beauty” with John Keats’s poem “Ode to a Nightingale” or Dylan Thomas’s poem “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” What does each poem reveal about the relationship between man, God, and nature?

•  Write a poem on any topic using sprung rhythm and alliteration. You may use any number of syllables per line, but you must keep to a set number of strong stresses per line (as in Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty,” you may vary the number by one only). You may use rhyme or not, as you wish. Write a short separate paragraph on how the techniques of sprung rhythm and alliteration helped or hindered the meaning of the...