SAT Literature: Theme (Poetry)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 1          How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 2          I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 3          My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 4          For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. 5          I love thee to the level of everyday"s 6          Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 7          I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; 8          I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 9          I love thee with the passion put to use 10        In my old griefs, and with my childhood"s faith. 11        I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 12        With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath, 13        Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose, 14        I shall but love thee better after death. What is the principal theme of this poem?

Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14) 1          Batter my heart, three-person"d God; for you 2          As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 3          That I may rise, and stand, o"erthrow me, and bend 4          Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 5          I, like an usurp"d town, to another due, 6          Labour to admit you, but O, to no end. 7          Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 8          But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. 9          Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, 10        But am betroth"d unto your enemy; 11        Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, 12        Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 13        Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 14        Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. At its most basic level, the theme of this poem is                      .

1   If but some vengeful god would call to me 2   From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, 3    Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, 4    That thy love"s loss is my hate"s profiting!"   5    Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, 6    Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; 7    Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I 8    Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.   9    But not so.   How arrives it joy lies slain, 10  And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? 11  —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, 12  And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . 13  These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown 14  Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.   (1898) Who or what is causing the speaker pain and suffering?

Passage adapted from "To Some Ladies" (1817) by John Keats What though while the wonders of nature exploring,  I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,  Bless Cynthia"s face, the enthusiast"s friend: (5) Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,  With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,  Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews. Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling? (10) Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?Ah! you list to the nightingale"s tender condoling,  Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air. "Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,  I see you are treading the verge of the sea:(15) And now! ah, I see it—you just now are stooping  To pick up the keep-sake intended for me. If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,  Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven;And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,  (20) The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given; It had not created a warmer emotion  Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you,Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean  Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw. (25) For, indeed, "tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,  (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,  In elegant, pure, and aerial minds. All of the following are themes evoked in the poem EXCEPT _____________.

1 They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, 2 Love and desire and hate: 3 I think they have no portion in us after 4 We pass the gate.    5 They are not long, the days of wine and roses: 6 Out of a misty dream 7 Our path emerges for a while, then closes 8 Within a dream.  (1896) This poem is primarily a meditation on ____________________.

In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin, Before Polygamy was made a Sin; When Man on many multipli’d his kind, E’r one to one was cursedly confin’d, When Nature prompted and no Law deni’d   (5)       Promiscuous Use of Concubine and Bride; Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heavens own heart, His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command, Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land.    (10) (1681) What is the main social structure being commented upon in this passage?

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it.      (5) I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;   “But I like it “Because it is bitter, “And because it is my heart.”    (10) (1895) The content of this passage can be said to be all but which of the following?

So live, that when thy summons comes to join    The innumerable caravan, which moves    To that mysterious realm, where each shall take    His chamber in the silent halls of death,    Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,     (5) Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed    By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,    Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch    About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. (1817) This passage presents an extended meditation on what subject?

Adapted from “Solitary Death, make me thine own” in Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses by Michael Field (pseudonym of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper) (1893)   Solitary Death, make me thine own, And let us wander the bare fields together;           Yea, thou and I alone Roving in unembittered unison forever.   I will not harry thy treasure-graves, I do not ask thy still hands a lover;             My heart within me craves To travel till we twain Time’s wilderness discover.   To sojourn with thee my soul was bred, And I, the courtly sights of life refusing,             To the wide shadows fled, And mused upon thee often as I fell a-musing.   Escaped from chaos, thy mother Night, In her maiden breast a burthen that awed her,            By cavern waters white Drew thee her first-born, her unfathered off-spring toward her.   On dewey plats, near twilight dingle, She oft, to still thee from men’s sobs and curses            In thine ears a-tingle, Pours her cool charms, her weird, reviving chaunt rehearses.   Though mortals menace thee or elude, And from thy confines break in swift transgression.             Thou for thyself art sued Of me, I claim thy cloudy purlieus my possession.   To a long freshwater, where the sea Stirs the silver flux of the reeds and willows,             Come thou, and beckon me To lie in the lull of the sand-sequestered billows:   Then take the life I have called my own And to the liquid universe deliver;             Loosening my spirit’s zone, Wrap round me as thy limbs the wind, the light, the river. Which of the following is NOT a subject treated in the poem?