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 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.
   • 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”.
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?

   • The single bird in the poem, so the ending would no longer have any birds in it.
   • Nothing important: the robin already whistles in that line, so the poem would still end on birdsong.
   • The gathering swallows, birds getting ready to leave, which quietly point toward winter.
   • The final rhyme word, “skies”, which completes the stanza’s pattern of rhymes.
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 makes the speaker sound cold and distant, naming the season instead of speaking to it.
   • It uses alliteration in “mists and mellow”, a sound device that repeats the letter m.
   • Nothing important: both openings tell the reader that autumn loads the vines and the trees with ripe fruit.
   • It greets Autumn by its qualities first, in soft m sounds, before saying what the season does.

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?

   • 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.
   • Playful teasing: the speaker wants to plant a doubt in the neighbor’s head, half as a joke.
9. 7.

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

   • The speaker is a farmer who meets the neighbor each spring to repair the wall, as part 3 explains.
   • The speaker is the one who calls the neighbor to rebuild the wall each spring, despite the doubt.
   • The speaker refuses to help and leaves the neighbor to repair the whole wall alone.
   • Frost farmed in New Hampshire, so the poem is a diary of his own work on a real wall.
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 sets two refrains against each other, doubt and habit, and the neighbor’s saying gets the last word.
    • 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.
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.
    • 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.
    • The lines sound broken and nervous, showing that the speaker is afraid of the neighbor.
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.
    • The comic picture of hungry apple trees shows the speaker’s teasing and makes the wall look pointless.
    • Both lines say the same thing, that trees stay where they grow, so the choice makes no real difference.
    • It warns that apple trees can harm pine trees, which is why the two farmers really need the wall.