Exam Sample

• Course: Appreciating Poetry 231 ENG

QUESTION 1: 

Answer only ONE question from the following (in an essay form):

1. How does Dudley Randall employ the irony in his poem "The Ballad of Birmingham" to achieve the real purpose of the poem?
2. How does the symbolism in "the Sick Rose" by William Blake affect the interpretation of the poem?

QUESTION 2:

Paraphrase and comment on the following extract (DO NOT FORGET TO identify the poet, the title of the poem, the theme, the important poetic elements and figure of speech) (in a long paragraph):

Extract 1:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;