An older British work and what later writing took from it

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   The Tables Turned, and Turned Again (older British poem and a later text)

   Period note:
   [1] William Wordsworth published “The Tables Turned” in 1798 in Lyrical Ballads, a book he made with Samuel Taylor Coleridge that is often taken as a beginning of English Romantic poetry.
   [2] The book's opening note calls its poems experiments in the language of everyday conversation, and Romantic writers prized feeling and the natural world over learning from books alone.
   [3] The poem answers its companion poem, in which a friend scolds the speaker for idling outdoors instead of reading; a slash marks each line end.

   From “The Tables Turned” (1798):
   [4] Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks, / Why all this toil and trouble? / Up! up! my friend, and quit your books, / Or surely you’ll grow double.…
   [5] …Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife, / Come, hear the woodland linnet, / How sweet his music; on my life / There’s more of wisdom in it.
   [6] And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!… / Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.
   [7] She has a world of ready wealth, / Our minds and hearts to bless— / Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, / Truth breathed by chearfulness.
   [8] One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man; / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can.…
   [9] …Enough of science and of art; / Close up these barren leaves; / Come forth, and bring with you a heart / That watches and receives.

   Later text (ours):
   [10] My grandmother kept this poem taped inside her bird notebook, and for years I followed it too literally, leaving field guides at home on the marsh trail.
   [11] Then one spring I watched a small streaked bird for twenty minutes, certain it was rare, until a library guide showed me an ordinary song sparrow I had never learned to recognize.
   [12] Now I do both: I go out to watch and receive, as the poem asks, and afterward I open those barren leaves, which turn out to be full of names.

   Word notes:
   [13] Clear your looks means stop frowning, and to grow double is to become bent over.
   [14] A linnet and a throstle, or song thrush, are songbirds; blithe means cheerful, vernal means of spring, and sages are wise teachers.

2. 1.

   Reader 1: Wordsworth rejects all learning. Reader 2: he rejects books that shut out the senses. Ari fills the truer row: which reading is truer, and why?

   • Reader 1, because Lyrical Ballads began English Romantic poetry, which rejected learning itself.
   • Reader 2, because Wordsworth says books are useful as long as nature comes first.
   • Reader 2, because sentence 9 trades the barren leaves for a heart that watches and receives.
   • Reader 1, because Close up these barren leaves orders the friend to stop studying for good.
3. 2.

   Luz fills the answer row. How do sentences 10 to 12 respond to Wordsworth's poem?

   • It argues back in part: it keeps watching and receiving but finds that books add what the eye missed.
   • It agrees fully, since both texts say a spring wood teaches more than the sages.
   • It mocks Wordsworth as a foolish poet whose advice spoiled the grandmother's birdwatching.
   • It rejects the poem outright, saying field guides matter more than any time outdoors.
4. 3.

   Tala checks three rows of a filled chart: taken, changed and period note. Which chart has every row right?

   • Taken: watch and receive (9, 12). Changed: books turn out full of names (12). Period: Romantics put feeling above books (2).
   • Taken: a song sparrow (5, 11). Changed: books turn out full of names (12). Period: Romantics put feeling above books (2).
   • Taken: watch and receive (9, 12). Changed: nothing, as the books stay barren (12). Period: Romantics put feeling above books (2).
   • Taken: watch and receive (9, 12). Changed: books turn out full of names (12). Period: Coleridge helped to make the book (1).
5. 4.

   Sentence 12 calls the pages barren leaves that turn out to be full of names. Pia fills the answer row: what does the later text do with Wordsworth's phrase?

   • It borrows his phrase in order to overturn it: the pages he called barren prove full.
   • It agrees with him, using his phrase to say that books are empty next to the marsh.
   • It repeats his phrase unchanged, to honor the grandmother's favorite poem and its meaning.
   • It gives the phrase to the grandmother, who first called her field guides barren.

6. First Looking into Chapman, and into a Shoebox (older British poem and a later text)

   Period note:
   [1] John Keats wrote this sonnet in October 1816, after he and his friend Charles Cowden Clarke stayed up late reading George Chapman's translation of Homer, made about two hundred years earlier.
   [2] Keats did not read ancient Greek, so this lively English version let him feel the force of Homer's poems for the first time.
   [3] The sonnet was printed in his first collection, Poems, published in London in 1817.
   [4] In the last lines Keats names Cortez, although historians record that the first European to see the Pacific from Darien, in Panama, was Vasco Núñez de Balboa, in 1513.

   “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” (1816):
   [5] Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, / And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; / Round many western islands have I been…
   [6] Oft of one wide expanse had I been told / That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; / Yet did I never breathe its pure serene / Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
   [7] Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken;
   [8] Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes / He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men / Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— / Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

   Later text (ours):
   [9] For years my relatives insisted that my great-grandfather's letters from coastal Galicia were worth reading, but they sat in a shoebox, in a Spanish I could only decipher word by word.
   [10] Then last winter my aunt, a Spanish teacher, read three of them aloud in her own plain English, and the harbor, the gulls and the price of salt came alive immediately.
   [11] I felt like an explorer watching an unfamiliar coastline rise out of the fog, except that this coastline had been waiting in our hall closet all along.

   Word notes:
   [12] The realms of gold are the rich worlds of literature, a demesne is the territory a lord rules, and serene here means clear, calm air.
   [13] Ken means the range of what one can see or know, and a wild surmise is an excited guess.
   [14] Darien is the old name for the eastern part of Panama.

7. 5.

   Milo fills the truer row for sentence 6. Which detail of the later text is truest to Keats's situation before he heard Chapman?

   • Sentence 10: like Keats, the narrator at last learns the old language and reads the original.
   • Sentence 11: the coastline rising out of the fog, like the wide expanse Keats was told of.
   • Sentence 10: as Keats ruled Homer's realm as his demesne, the aunt takes charge of the letters.
   • Sentence 9: told for years the letters were worth reading, but unable to read them yet.
8. 6.

   Zee fills the answer row. How does the later text in sentences 9 to 11 respond to Keats's sonnet?

   • It agrees with Keats that the greatest discoveries are of new lands across the sea.
   • It argues back that real discovery comes from the original language, not from a translation.
   • It honors the sonnet by updating it: discovery comes through a relative's spoken translation.
   • It mocks Keats's grand explorers by shrinking their great discovery down to a closet.
9. 7.

   Kira checks three rows of a filled chart: taken, changed and period note. Which chart has every row right?

   • Taken: a discovery through translation, likened to an explorer (10, 11). Changed: nothing, as both find a new planet (7). Period: Keats read no Greek (2).
   • Taken: a discovery through translation, likened to an explorer (10, 11). Changed: Homer becomes family letters (9). Period: Keats read no Greek (2).
   • Taken: a discovery through translation, likened to an explorer (10, 11). Changed: family letters become Homer (9). Period: Keats read no Greek (2).
   • Taken: a discovery through translation, likened to an explorer (10, 11). Changed: Homer becomes family letters (9). Period: Balboa saw the Pacific first (4).
10. 8.

    A reader says Keats got history wrong, so the Cortez lines fail. Ren fills the truer row: which response is truer to the sonnet?

    • The lines fail, because a careful poet today would simply check the name before printing it.
    • The lines work, because in 1816 most readers believed that Cortez saw the Pacific first.
    • The lines still work, since sentence 8 is about the silent awe of first sight, which a wrong name leaves intact.
    • The lines fail, because a peak in Panama has nothing to do with reading a book.
11. 9.

    Esme sets sentence 11 beside sentences 7 and 8. What does the later text keep from Keats's comparisons, and what does it change?

    • It turns Keats's joy into disappointment, since the new coast was only a closet.
    • It keeps an explorer sighting new land but makes the land something hidden at home all along.
    • It keeps Keats's comparison unchanged: a watcher sees a new planet swim into view.
    • It changes Keats's sailor in the fog into an explorer standing on a peak in Darien.
12. 10.

    Noah checks three rows of a filled chart: older work, later text and truer to the source. Which chart has every row right?

    • Older: Chapman's English opens Homer to Keats (6). Later: an aunt's English opens the letters (10). Truer: the later text alone credits one.
    • Older: Chapman's English opens Homer to Keats (6). Later: an aunt's English opens the letters (10). Truer: both credit the translator.
    • Older: an aunt reads Homer aloud to Keats (6). Later: an aunt's English opens the letters (10). Truer: both credit the translator.
    • Older: Keats could not read ancient Greek (2). Later: an aunt's English opens the letters (10). Truer: both credit the translator.