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

2. What does the poem's speaker have that cousin Kate does not in the poem of the same name?

3. What does the speaker in the first poem entitled Song say ought to be given to those living in their prime?

4. In the second stanza of Echo, the speaker says that the dream's wakening should have been in what location?

5. What does the speaker in the first poem entitled Song say ought to be given to those in the flush of youth?

Short Essay Questions

1. What revenge is given to the poem's speaker in Cousin Kate?

2. How does Maude Clare, in the poem of the same name confront the newly-wedded couple?

3. What is implied to be the meaning of the poem by the final stanza of An End?

4. Why does Maude betray her sister in Sister Maude?

5. What fills the poem's speaker with sadness in At Home?

6. What does the "Spring" in the second stanza of The First Spring Day interpretatively signify?

7. What is the "it" of May?

8. Why does the great lord cast aside the poem's speaker in Cousin Kate?

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

10. For what does the inn in Up-Hill stand as a metaphor, and what indicates this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A constant theme in Rossetti's poetry is the struggle of a speaker against despair. Compose an analytical essay which examines this theme overall. How is it portrayed in individual poems? How is it portrayed overall? What shapes does the struggle take? What prompts the feelings of despair? In what ways, if any, is the despair overcome? With what does the speaker struggle against despair; in other words, how does she try to conquer it? Give specific examples.

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

Compose an analytical essay on the theme revealed in the last poem of the collection, The World, namely that of struggling with the World's two-faced transformation, its false beauty and true ugliness. How is this theme portrayed throughout Rossetti's poems? In which poems does the World appear seductively beautiful? In which poems is its hideousness revealed? What does this help the reader to see about the World in which he lives? What do the poems overall seem to suggest as a contrary way of living? What other beauties can and should a person pursue? How should one react to both faces of the World?

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