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 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' 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' 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' 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'