Important Questions Poetry | M.A. English Part II (PU) | Eureka Study Aids

1. WILLIAM BLAKE

1. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
(b) O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm
(c) How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals;
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
2. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My for ourtretched beneath the tree
(b) The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.
(c) And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
3. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry.
(b) Ah, sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that golden clime,
Where the traveller's journey is done
(c) For where'er the sun does shine
And where'er the rain does fall
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appal.
4. Blake As a Romantic Poet
5. Blake As a Mystic
6. Symbolism in Blake's Poetry
7. Comparison Between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
8. Comparison Between Holy Thursday I and Holy Thursday II

Notes Prepared By: Prof. Shahbaz Asghar

2. S.T. COLERIDGE
9. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
(b) And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
(c) Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? And are there two?
Is Death that Woman's mate?
10. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
(b) This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart --
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
(c) Then reached the cavers measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voice prophesying war!
11. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread.
(b) Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awer,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
(c) There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
12. Coleridge As a Poet of Supernatural
13. Coleridge As a Narrator/Story Teller
14. Theme of Torment in Coleridge's Poetry
15. Critical Appreciation of 'Kubla Khan' 
16. Moral of 'The Ancient Mariner' 

Notes Prepared By: Prof. Shahbaz Asghar

3. JOHN KEATS
17. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) It seem'd no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one, who with a kindred hand
Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who know it not.
(b) Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Forward he stoop's over the airy shore,
And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.
(c) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him to to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
18. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou has thy music too, --
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
(b) Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But in the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
(c) Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
19. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
(b) Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
(c) When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, --that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
20. Keats As a Pure Poet
21. Keats As a Poet of Beauty
22. Sensuousness in Keats' Poetry
23. Negative Capability of Keats
24. Comparison Between 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Ode to a Grecian Urn' 

Notes Prepared By: Prof. Shahbaz Asghar

4. SEAMUS HEANEY
25. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
(b) Some day I will go to Archus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
(c) I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate ....
26. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbrel
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names.
(b) Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home,
(c) He had unstrapped
The heavy ledger, and my father
Was making tillage returns
In acres, roods, and perches.
27. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) A shadow bobbed in the window
He was snapping the carrier spring
Over the ledger. His boot pushed off
And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked.
(b) Sowers of see, erectors of headstones ...
O charioteers, above your dormant guns,
It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,
The invisible, untoppled omphalos.
(c) I love hushed air. I trust contrariness.
Years and years go past and I cannot move
For I see that when one man casts, the other gathers
And then vice versa, without changing sides.
28. Seamus Heaney As a Modern Poet
29. Major Themes in Heaney's Poetry
30. Symbolism in Heaney's Poetry
31. Critical Appreciation of 'The Tollund Man' 
32. Critical Appreciation of 'Personal Helicon' 

Notes Prepared By: Prof. Shahbaz Asghar

5. PHILIP LARKIN AND TED HUGHES
33. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
(b) That how we live measures our own nature,
And at this age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.
(c) A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
34. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede.
(b) Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
(c) Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
35. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
(b) Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
(c) You went on and on. Here were reason
To recite Chaucer. Then came the Wyf of Bath,
Your favourite character in all literature.
You were rapt. And the cows were enthralled.
36. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) You went on --
And twenty cows stayed with you you hypnotized.
How did you stop? I can't remember
You stopping.
(b) ..... England could add
Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancasters
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.
(c) Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath --
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
37. Important Features of Larkin's Poetry
38. Animal Imagery in Ted Hughes' Poetry
39. Comparison Between 'That Morning' and 'Thought Fox' 
40. Comparison Between 'Chaucer' and 'Full Moon and Little Frieda' 

Notes Prepared By: Prof. Shahbaz Asghar