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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. Upon what does the poem's speaker's head rest in After Death?

2. What is a halcyon sea as used in A Birthday?

3. To what is Maude Clare compared in the first stanza of Maude Clare?

4. Whose wings does God guide in Spring?

5. Where does the great lord first see cousin Kate in the poem of the same name?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the coldness in Winter: My Secret symbolize?

2. What is the meaning of the phrase, "The bright hues vanish and the odors fly, / The grass hath lasting worth" in Sweet Death?

3. What is the "it" of May?

4. What is to be inferred from the last clause of After Death, "and very sweet it is / To know he still is warm though I am cold"?

5. Why does the speaker attempt to cast off her expectations in A Pause of Thought?

6. For what reason is the poem's speaker in a celebratory mood in A Birthday?

7. Who are the wayfarers who have gone before the poem's inquisitive speaker in Up-Hill?

8. What characterizes the poem's speaker's commands to the rose and the bird in the first two stanzas of A Summer Wish?

9. What is significant about the doves, lilies, and butterflies listed being in pairs in the second poem entitled Song?

10. How does Lizzie save her sister in Goblin Market?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Many of the poems in this collection are in the traditional Italian sonnet form. This includes A Triad, Remember, After Death, The One Certainty, and The World. Using either a few, or all, of these sonnets, compose an analytical essay which demonstrates how the Italian sonnet form conveys its significance through exposition in the octave and explication or resolution in the sestet. How do the two parts interact with one another? What does the commentary or resolution in the sestet achieve? What opportunities of conveying significance does the form of the sonnet allow? What is the significance of some of the sonnets in the collection?

Essay Topic 2

As Rossetti's poems turn more and more to religious devotion, the tone of her poems remains the same, but the content changes. Rather than have her speakers evince a desire for earthly love, they seek out sanctification and spiritual justification. In a rigorously developed and planned analytical essay, examine this transformation in desire. How are the earlier and later poems similar? How are they the same? What unites them? What distinguishes them? How are the later poems in some way a fulfillment of the earlier? What do the two sorts of desires reveal about human nature? What does the transformation in poetry reveal about human nature?

Essay Topic 3

A consistent theme in Rossetti's poems is the significance of Spring. Write an analytical essay which discusses the various significations which Spring has throughout her poetry. What imagery is associated with Spring? What does this imagery signify? What emotions are attached to the arrival of Spring? How does the season of Spring correlate to the human condition? In what ways does the internal disposition of a human person cohere with or reject the seasonal activity of Spring? What does this reveal about human nature, particularly human emotions and desires?

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