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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What shall happen to those who praise the auditor of "A Song for Simeon"?

2. At the end of their journey, at what time did the speakers of the "Journey of the Magi" prefer to travel?

3. What in "Morning at the Window" "hovers in the air" and "vanishes along the level of the roofs"?

4. For what did Donne in "Whispers of Immortality" find no substitute?

5. To what animal's path will the speaker of "A Song for Simeon" children's children take?

Short Essay Questions

1. What characterizes the speech of the stuffed men in "The Hollow Men"?

2. What is the tone of the speaker in "Morning at the Window" and why?

3. What is meant at the end of the "Journey of the Magi" by the magi saying that they found death when they encountered the Christ child?

4. What evidently characterizes the woman in "Hysteria"?

5. What is the significance of the two stanzas concerned with Donne in "Whispers of Immortality"?

6. Who are the "ladies of the corridor" in "Sweeney Erect"?

7. What is meant in The Hippopotamus by stating that the "True Church remains below / Wrapt in the old miasmal mist"?

8. What sort of people are the "nightingales" among whom Sweeney cavorts in "Sweeney Among the Nightingales"?

9. What is the relationship between the speaker and his interlocutor in "Portrait of a Lady"?

10. What does the "Boston Evening Transcript" seem to symbolize in the poem of the same name?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Important to many of Eliot's poems are the devices of simile, metaphor, and analogy. Considering a wide selection of his poems, craft an analytical essay on these poetic devices. What are they? How do they aid in the creation of poetic imagery and poetic meaning? What are some specific instances of each? How do these specific instances aid the reader in both visualizing the poem's literal significance and its deeper meaning?

Essay Topic 2

Though a persistent if implicit consideration in all of Eliot's poetry, and explicit in all of the "Four Quartets", "The Dry Salvages" speaks of the "intersection of the timeless with time." Analyze and explicate this abstract and metaphysical statement in the context of either "The Dry Salvages" alone or of all of the "Four Quartets". What does it mean to say that time and the timeless intersect? What happens at such a point? What is to be found in time? What is to be found in the timeless? Who discerns this point? What does this indicate about the nature of humanity? How is this notion contextualized in the "Four Quartets"?

Essay Topic 3

The majority of T.S. Eliot's poetry is written in the deliberately unstructured form of free verse. Prior to Eliot, many poets considered this an inferior form, and in some cases, not a form at all. Evaluate Eliot's use of free verse in one or more of his poems, and judge whether or not it is truly poetic. What does free verse enable the poet to do that regularly structured meter does not? What effects does the free verse employed by Eliot produce? How does the free verse employed by Eliot produce effects? In the poem chosen, what particular effects does the free verse used produce? Why is this fitting for the poem's overall meaning? In what way is the poem truly or not truly poetic because of the free verse form?

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