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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. Who accompanies Gertrude and helps her with her large load of apples in An Apple Gathering?

2. What emotion does the man in After Death feel for the poem's speaker in the latter's posthumous condition?

3. What do the neighbors call the poem's speaker in the 4th stanza of Cousin Kate?

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

5. In what is cousin Kate's love writ in the poem of the same name?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why would the flowers given to the youth change from roses to violets after death in the first poem entitled Song?

2. With what sort of temptations does the Devil assail the second speaker in The Three Enemies?

3. Why does the poem's speaker find no apples in her apple tree in An Apple Gathering?

4. What is the significance of "night" in the second poem entitled Song?

5. Who is Ruth, as used in the last line of Sweet Death?

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

7. Why might the man in After Death pity the poem's speaker now that she is dead?

8. What does it mean to say that the life of the speaker in A Better Resurrection is like a broken bowl which cannot hold a drop of cordial?

9. What is the tone of the speaker towards death in the final poem entitled Song?

10. What is a possible interpretation of the last line of the first stanza in the first poem entitled Song, "Grown old before my time"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Oftentimes the exact meaning of a poem can be difficult to discern by simply reading what is present on the page; the literal text demands that the reader make an inference based on what is written, without explicitly making it clear. This is perhaps most evident in The One Certainty, but can also be seen in Sweet Death, Dream Land and many others. Using examples from Rossetti's poetry, write an analytical essay on the process of valid inference of meaning from a poem in which the literal meaning obscures the deeper significance. What are some examples of this inference? How is this inference made? What validates such inference? What are the difficulties of making such an inference? How should such an inference be portrayed?

Essay Topic 2

Throughout Rossetti's poetry, there is a persistent theme of seeking hope. Though the speakers in her poems often indicate feelings of despair, and though all seems oftentimes to be lost, there is a recurrence of if not hope, at the very least the hoping for, the desiring for hope. This is particularly evident in the devotional poems towards the end of the collection. Compose an analytical essay which examines this theme. In which poems is it evident? How is it generally portrayed? In what ways is hope persistently present throughout the collection? What imagery is used to represent hope? How is this imagery portrayed? What is significant about this imagery? In what ways is hope eventually found? In what does hope subsist?

Essay Topic 3

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?

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