How a poem’s form, speaker and sound work together

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   To Autumn (John Keats, 1820, with our notes)

   Background:
   [1] Keats wrote this ode in September 1819, after a walk through the stubble fields near Winchester, and published it in 1820.
   [2] An ode is a serious, formal lyric that speaks directly to its subject, and here the speaker addresses Autumn as if it were a person.
   [3] The three stanzas have eleven lines each, mostly in iambic pentameter, and each stanza opens with a quatrain rhyming ABAB.
   [4] The second stanza, which pictures Autumn resting among the harvest work, is left out here, and an ellipsis marks the cut.

   The poem (stanzas 1 and 3):
   [5] Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
   [6] Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; / To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells / With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees, / Until they think warm days will never cease, / For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
   …
   [7] Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   [8] Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— / While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
   [9] Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; / And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; / Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft / The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

   Word notes:
   [10] “Mellow” describes something ripe, soft and full of flavor, and “conspiring” here means secretly planning together.
   [11] Thatch-eves are the overhanging edges of a straw roof, and “o’er-brimm’d” means filled until overflowing.
   [12] “Clammy cells” are the sticky honeycomb compartments that the bees have filled.
   [13] Sallows are willow trees, a bourn is a stream or a boundary, and “treble” means a high, light musical voice.
   [14] A garden-croft is a small enclosed field or garden beside a cottage.

2. 1.

   Ari is labeling the speaker’s attitude. In parts 7 and 8 the speaker asks where spring’s songs are. What attitude toward Autumn does the speaker take?

   • Regretful: the speaker misses spring and wishes Autumn would end so that its songs could return.
   • Homesick: Keats wrote it after a walk near Winchester and asks where his own spring in London has gone.
   • Puzzled: the speaker has lost track of spring’s song sheets and asks Autumn to help find them.
   • Comforting: the speaker tells Autumn not to envy spring, because autumn has music of its own.
3. 2.

   Bo is reading parts 5 and 6. How does the speaker address Autumn there, and what does that show about the speaker’s view of the season?

   • As a thief who conspires with the sun against the farmers: the speaker fears the season’s tricks.
   • As a close friend who plots with the sun to ripen everything: the speaker admires it.
   • As a real neighbor of the speaker who lives near the sun and grows apples, gourds and hazelnuts.
   • As the subject of an ode, since part 2 says that an ode speaks directly to its subject.
4. 3.

   Jun notices that parts 5 and 6 pile up phrases, “to load”, “To bend”, “To swell”, with no main verb. How does this shape suit what the speaker describes?

   • The stanza is a Petrarchan octave and sestet, so the long sentence turns at its ninth line.
   • The never-finished sentence overflows like the fruit it describes, until summer has “o’er-brimm’d”.
   • The missing main verb makes the stanza feel empty and unfinished, like a harvest that has failed in a bad year.
   • The phrases all begin with “to”, a kind of repetition that makes the stanza sound musical.
5. 4.

   Kira imagines a different ending. Suppose part 9 stopped at “The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft” and left out the last line. What would be lost?

   • Nothing important: the robin already whistles in that line, so the poem would still end on birdsong.
   • The single bird in the poem, so the ending would no longer have any birds in it.
   • The final rhyme word, “skies”, which completes the stanza’s pattern of rhymes.
   • The gathering swallows, birds getting ready to leave, which quietly point toward winter.
6. 5.

   Luz compares a plainer opening, “Autumn, you load the vines with fruit.” What does Keats’s opening, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” do instead?

   • It greets Autumn by its qualities first, in soft m sounds, before saying what the season does.
   • It makes the speaker sound cold and distant, naming the season instead of speaking to it.
   • Nothing important: both openings tell the reader that autumn loads the vines and the trees with ripe fruit.
   • It uses alliteration in “mists and mellow”, a sound device that repeats the letter m.

7. Mending Wall (Robert Frost, 1914, with our notes)

   Background:
   [1] Robert Frost published “Mending Wall” in North of Boston, printed in London in 1914 and in New York in 1915.
   [2] It is written in blank verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter that stay remarkably close to the rhythm of ordinary conversation.
   [3] The speaker is a farmer who meets a neighbor each spring to repair the stone wall between their properties.
   [4] Editorial omissions in this excerpt are indicated with ellipses.

   The poem (excerpt):
   [5] Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, / And spills the upper boulders in the sun; / And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
   …
   [6] I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; / And on a day we meet to walk the line / And set the wall between us once again. …
   [7] There where it is we do not need the wall: / He is all pine and I am apple orchard. / My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. / He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
   [8] Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder / If I could put a notion in his head: / “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it / Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. / Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offence. / Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down.”
   …
   [9] He will not go behind his father’s saying, / And he likes having thought of it so well / He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

   Word notes:
   [10] The “frozen-ground-swell” is the heaving of soil as it freezes and thaws, which gradually dislodges stones.
   [11] “Abreast” means side by side, and “was like to give offence” means was likely to offend.
   [12] To “go behind” a saying is to question its origin and whether it remains true.
   [13] The London printing used British spellings for “neighbor” and “neighbors”, which are given here in American form.
   [14] New England farmers traditionally constructed such walls from stones that surfaced in their fields.

8. 6.

   Milo is labeling the speaker’s attitude. In part 8 the speaker says, “Spring is the mischief in me.” What attitude toward the neighbor does this show?

   • Playful teasing: the speaker wants to plant a doubt in the neighbor’s head, half as a joke.
   • Frost’s own view: he believed walls in general are wrong and wrote the poem to argue for removing them.
   • Bitter anger: the speaker wants to quarrel with the neighbor and tear the wall down for good.
   • Spring weather has made the speaker ill with a fever that causes strange behavior.
9. 7.

   Noah notices that the speaker doubts the wall, yet part 6 shows something surprising. What does part 6 reveal about the speaker?

   • Frost farmed in New Hampshire, so the poem is a diary of his own work on a real wall.
   • The speaker refuses to help and leaves the neighbor to repair the whole wall alone.
   • The speaker is the one who calls the neighbor to rebuild the wall each spring, despite the doubt.
   • The speaker is a farmer who meets the neighbor each spring to repair the wall, as part 3 explains.
10. 8.

    Pia marks two repeated lines: the speaker’s “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and the neighbor’s saying. How does this repetition shape the poem?

    • Repeating a line is called a refrain, a sound device found in many old songs and ballads.
    • It shows the speaker and the neighbor slowly coming to agree that walls are needed in the end.
    • It shows that blank verse sounds like ordinary talk, as part 2 says, because people often repeat themselves.
    • It sets two refrains against each other, doubt and habit, and the neighbor’s saying gets the last word.
11. 9.

    Ren is linking form to speaker. How do the poem’s unrhymed, conversational lines suit this speaker and situation?

    • The lines are iambic pentameter without rhyme, which is the form called blank verse.
    • The lines sound broken and nervous, showing that the speaker is afraid of the neighbor.
    • Its tight rhyming couplets make the speaker sound formal, like a judge reading out a law about walls.
    • Plain, talky blank verse fits a farmer joking at ordinary work, so a large question arises casually.
12. 10.

    Zee compares a plainer line, “Our trees cannot cross the line.” Why is “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines” the stronger choice here?

    • It uses enjambment, running “get across / And eat” over the line end.
    • Both lines say the same thing, that trees stay where they grow, so the choice makes no real difference.
    • The comic picture of hungry apple trees shows the speaker’s teasing and makes the wall look pointless.
    • It warns that apple trees can harm pine trees, which is why the two farmers really need the wall.