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

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   I wandered lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth, 1807, with our notes)

   Background:
   [1] William Wordsworth first published this short lyric in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, and it is printed here in that first version, with its original spelling and punctuation.
   [2] In April 1802 the poet and his sister Dorothy had walked beside Ullswater, a lake in northern England, and Dorothy’s journal describes a long belt of daffodils tossing and dancing in the wind.
   [3] Because the poem uses the first person, careful readers separate the speaker, the “I” who lives through the experience, from the poet, who chose every word and line of the finished poem.
   [4] Each stanza has six lines of four beats rhyming ABABCC, so every stanza ends on a rhyming couplet.
   [5] Wordsworth later revised the poem, and the familiar version printed after 1815 adds a fourth stanza and changes several words.

   The poem:
   [6] I wandered lonely as a Cloud / That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd / A host of dancing Daffodills; / Along the Lake, beneath the trees, / Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.
   [7] The waves beside them danced, but they / Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:— / A Poet could not but be gay / In such a laughing company: / I gaz’d—and gaz’d—but little thought / What wealth the shew to me had brought:
   [8] For oft when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood, / They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude, / And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the Daffodils.

   Word notes:
   [9] In this older usage “gay” means cheerful and lively, and “glee” means delight or merriment.
   [10] “Shew” is an older spelling of “show,” here meaning the spectacle or display that the speaker watched.
   [11] A “couch” is a bed or resting seat, “vacant” means empty of particular thoughts, and “pensive” means quietly thoughtful.
   [12] “Solitude” means being alone, and “bliss” means complete happiness.
   [13] The spelling “Daffodills” in the first stanza is printed exactly as it appeared in 1807.
   [14] The dashes in the second stanza and the capital letters on nouns such as Cloud, Lake and Poet are also printed as they appeared in 1807.

2. 1.

   Ari is marking each line end in part 7 as a stop or a run-on. Which line break splits a subject from its verb, so the reader must run on?

   • “but they / Outdid”: the break slows the stanza down, so the waves seem tired and sad beside the flowers.
   • “In such a laughing company:” this line runs on with no pause, so the reader rushes into the line below.
   • “I gaz’d—and gaz’d—but little thought / What wealth”: the subject “I” ends one line, and its verb opens the next.
   • “but they / Outdid”: the subject “they” ends one line, and its verb, “Outdid”, opens the next line.
3. 2.

   Bo is labeling the speaker apart from the poet. In part 8, where is the speaker, and what happens to the speaker there?

   • Sitting at a writing desk in 1815, Wordsworth revises the poem and adds a fourth stanza about the flowers.
   • Walking with Dorothy beside Ullswater in April 1802, the speaker reads a journal entry about the daffodils.
   • Lying on a couch some time after the walk, the speaker sees the daffodils again in memory and feels joy.
   • Standing beside the lake on the same day, the speaker watches the daffodils and the waves dance together.
4. 3.

   Esme is naming the stanza’s rhyme pattern in the margin. Which description fits part 6, and how can you tell from the poem?

   • ABABCC: each line of the stanza has exactly four beats, so the last two lines must form a couplet.
   • Free verse: the six lines have no rhyme scheme and change length to follow the speaker’s wandering mood.
   • ABABCC: “Cloud” and “crowd” rhyme, “Hills” and “Daffodills” rhyme, and “trees” and “breeze” close it as a couplet.
   • ABABCC: part 4 of the background says that each stanza rhymes this way and ends on a couplet.

5. On the Grasshopper and Cricket (John Keats, 1817, with our notes)

   Background:
   [1] John Keats wrote this sonnet on December 30, 1816, during a friendly contest in which he and the poet Leigh Hunt each wrote a sonnet on the same subject within a short, agreed time.
   [2] Keats printed it the next year in his first book, Poems, published in London in 1817.
   [3] A Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet has fourteen lines divided into an eight-line octave rhyming ABBAABBA and a six-line sestet, and its argument usually turns at the start of line 9.
   [4] A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet instead has three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
   [5] The poem is printed below in three numbered parts: the first half of the octave, the second half of the octave, and the complete sestet.

   The poem:
   [6] The poetry of earth is never dead: / When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, / And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run / From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
   [7] That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead / In summer luxury,—he has never done / With his delights; for when tired out with fun / He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
   [8] The poetry of earth is ceasing never: / On a lone winter evening, when the frost / Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills / The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, / And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, / The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

   Word notes:
   [9] A “mead” is a meadow, and “new-mown” means that its grass has just been cut.
   [10] “Luxury” here means rich, comfortable enjoyment and abundance rather than expensive possessions or extravagant spending.
   [11] “Wrought a silence” means created or brought about a silence, and “shrills” means sounds in a high, piercing voice.
   [12] In many nineteenth-century homes a cricket living near the warm kitchen stove could be heard chirping on winter evenings.
   [13] “Drowsiness” is the sleepy feeling just before sleep.
   [14] Leigh Hunt’s own sonnet on the same subject, written at the same sitting, is a separate poem and is not printed here.

6. 4.

   Jun is marking the line ends of part 6. Which line runs on into the next, so the sentence cannot pause at the line end?

   • “he takes the lead / In summer luxury”: this is the run-on line in part 6, carrying “lead” into the next line.
   • “a voice will run / From hedge to hedge”: the break makes the voice stop and fall silent in the summer heat.
   • “From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;” the line runs on, so the reader cannot pause after “mead”.
   • “a voice will run / From hedge to hedge”: the verb “run” needs the next line to say where the voice goes.
7. 5.

   Kira is labeling the speaker apart from the poet. Which description of the speaker fits the evidence of the poem itself?

   • A person in a nineteenth-century kitchen who hears a cricket by the stove, as part 12 explains.
   • An unnamed observer who never says “I” and describes the insects and a drowsy listener from outside.
   • A sleepy farmer lying in the summer grass who says “I” and hears the grasshopper beside the hedge.
   • John Keats himself, racing Leigh Hunt to finish a sonnet within the agreed time on December 30, 1816.
8. 6.

   Luz must name this sonnet’s type in the margin. Which label fits, with proof from the poem itself?

   • Ode: a long, formal poem that speaks directly to the grasshopper and the cricket and praises them.
   • Shakespearean: three quatrains rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF lead to a closing couplet that sums the poem up.
   • Petrarchan: the octave rhymes ABBAABBA, and the sestet begins a new turn with “The poetry of earth is ceasing never”.
   • Petrarchan: the poem has fourteen lines, and Keats wrote it in a contest with the poet Leigh Hunt.

9. I wandered lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth, 1807, with our notes)

   Background:
   [1] William Wordsworth first published this short lyric in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, and it is printed here in that first version, with its original spelling and punctuation.
   [2] In April 1802 the poet and his sister Dorothy had walked beside Ullswater, a lake in northern England, and Dorothy’s journal describes a long belt of daffodils tossing and dancing in the wind.
   [3] Because the poem uses the first person, careful readers separate the speaker, the “I” who lives through the experience, from the poet, who chose every word and line of the finished poem.
   [4] Each stanza has six lines of four beats rhyming ABABCC, so every stanza ends on a rhyming couplet.
   [5] Wordsworth later revised the poem, and the familiar version printed after 1815 adds a fourth stanza and changes several words.

   The poem:
   [6] I wandered lonely as a Cloud / That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd / A host of dancing Daffodills; / Along the Lake, beneath the trees, / Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.
   [7] The waves beside them danced, but they / Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:— / A Poet could not but be gay / In such a laughing company: / I gaz’d—and gaz’d—but little thought / What wealth the shew to me had brought:
   [8] For oft when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood, / They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude, / And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the Daffodils.

   Word notes:
   [9] In this older usage “gay” means cheerful and lively, and “glee” means delight or merriment.
   [10] “Shew” is an older spelling of “show,” here meaning the spectacle or display that the speaker watched.
   [11] A “couch” is a bed or resting seat, “vacant” means empty of particular thoughts, and “pensive” means quietly thoughtful.
   [12] “Solitude” means being alone, and “bliss” means complete happiness.
   [13] The spelling “Daffodills” in the first stanza is printed exactly as it appeared in 1807.
   [14] The dashes in the second stanza and the capital letters on nouns such as Cloud, Lake and Poet are also printed as they appeared in 1807.

10. 7.

    Milo is comparing the line ends in part 8. Which line runs on, so the way the speaker lies is finished only in the line below?

    • “For oft when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood”: the break shows the speaker is restless and cannot keep still.
    • “For oft when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood”: the phrase saying how the speaker lies spills over.
    • “And then my heart with pleasure fills,” the line runs on into “And dances”, which says how the speaker lies.
    • “And dances with the Daffodils.” this last line runs on, because the sentence continues into another stanza.

11. On the Grasshopper and Cricket (John Keats, 1817, with our notes)

    Background:
    [1] John Keats wrote this sonnet on December 30, 1816, during a friendly contest in which he and the poet Leigh Hunt each wrote a sonnet on the same subject within a short, agreed time.
    [2] Keats printed it the next year in his first book, Poems, published in London in 1817.
    [3] A Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet has fourteen lines divided into an eight-line octave rhyming ABBAABBA and a six-line sestet, and its argument usually turns at the start of line 9.
    [4] A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet instead has three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
    [5] The poem is printed below in three numbered parts: the first half of the octave, the second half of the octave, and the complete sestet.

    The poem:
    [6] The poetry of earth is never dead: / When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, / And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run / From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
    [7] That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead / In summer luxury,—he has never done / With his delights; for when tired out with fun / He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
    [8] The poetry of earth is ceasing never: / On a lone winter evening, when the frost / Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills / The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, / And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, / The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

    Word notes:
    [9] A “mead” is a meadow, and “new-mown” means that its grass has just been cut.
    [10] “Luxury” here means rich, comfortable enjoyment and abundance rather than expensive possessions or extravagant spending.
    [11] “Wrought a silence” means created or brought about a silence, and “shrills” means sounds in a high, piercing voice.
    [12] In many nineteenth-century homes a cricket living near the warm kitchen stove could be heard chirping on winter evenings.
    [13] “Drowsiness” is the sleepy feeling just before sleep.
    [14] Leigh Hunt’s own sonnet on the same subject, written at the same sitting, is a separate poem and is not printed here.

12. 8.

    Noah is marking the sestet in part 8. Which line break leaves a subject waiting at a line end for its verb, delaying the silence?

    • “The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, / And seems”: “song” ends one line, and its verb opens the next.
    • “The poetry of earth is ceasing never:” the line runs on, so the colon at its end does not stop the sense.
    • “when the frost / Has wrought a silence”: the break speeds the line up, like the cricket’s quick chirping.
    • “when the frost / Has wrought a silence”: “frost” ends one line, and its verb, “Has wrought”, opens the next.

13. I wandered lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth, 1807, with our notes)

    Background:
    [1] William Wordsworth first published this short lyric in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, and it is printed here in that first version, with its original spelling and punctuation.
    [2] In April 1802 the poet and his sister Dorothy had walked beside Ullswater, a lake in northern England, and Dorothy’s journal describes a long belt of daffodils tossing and dancing in the wind.
    [3] Because the poem uses the first person, careful readers separate the speaker, the “I” who lives through the experience, from the poet, who chose every word and line of the finished poem.
    [4] Each stanza has six lines of four beats rhyming ABABCC, so every stanza ends on a rhyming couplet.
    [5] Wordsworth later revised the poem, and the familiar version printed after 1815 adds a fourth stanza and changes several words.

    The poem:
    [6] I wandered lonely as a Cloud / That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd / A host of dancing Daffodills; / Along the Lake, beneath the trees, / Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.
    [7] The waves beside them danced, but they / Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:— / A Poet could not but be gay / In such a laughing company: / I gaz’d—and gaz’d—but little thought / What wealth the shew to me had brought:
    [8] For oft when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood, / They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude, / And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the Daffodils.

    Word notes:
    [9] In this older usage “gay” means cheerful and lively, and “glee” means delight or merriment.
    [10] “Shew” is an older spelling of “show,” here meaning the spectacle or display that the speaker watched.
    [11] A “couch” is a bed or resting seat, “vacant” means empty of particular thoughts, and “pensive” means quietly thoughtful.
    [12] “Solitude” means being alone, and “bliss” means complete happiness.
    [13] The spelling “Daffodills” in the first stanza is printed exactly as it appeared in 1807.
    [14] The dashes in the second stanza and the capital letters on nouns such as Cloud, Lake and Poet are also printed as they appeared in 1807.

14. 9.

    Tala is checking the end of the poem. Which choice names the rhyme pair that closes part 8 and says correctly why it is a couplet?

    • “lie” and “eye”: they form a couplet, because the two words sit next to each other at the end of the stanza.
    • “fills” and “Daffodils”: part 13 says this spelling of the flower is printed exactly as it was in 1807.
    • “fills” and “Daffodils”: the last two lines rhyme with each other, so they form a couplet that closes the poem.
    • “fills” and “Daffodils”: they form a couplet, because both of the last two lines begin with the word “And”.

15. On the Grasshopper and Cricket (John Keats, 1817, with our notes)

    Background:
    [1] John Keats wrote this sonnet on December 30, 1816, during a friendly contest in which he and the poet Leigh Hunt each wrote a sonnet on the same subject within a short, agreed time.
    [2] Keats printed it the next year in his first book, Poems, published in London in 1817.
    [3] A Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet has fourteen lines divided into an eight-line octave rhyming ABBAABBA and a six-line sestet, and its argument usually turns at the start of line 9.
    [4] A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet instead has three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
    [5] The poem is printed below in three numbered parts: the first half of the octave, the second half of the octave, and the complete sestet.

    The poem:
    [6] The poetry of earth is never dead: / When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, / And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run / From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
    [7] That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead / In summer luxury,—he has never done / With his delights; for when tired out with fun / He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
    [8] The poetry of earth is ceasing never: / On a lone winter evening, when the frost / Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills / The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, / And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, / The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

    Word notes:
    [9] A “mead” is a meadow, and “new-mown” means that its grass has just been cut.
    [10] “Luxury” here means rich, comfortable enjoyment and abundance rather than expensive possessions or extravagant spending.
    [11] “Wrought a silence” means created or brought about a silence, and “shrills” means sounds in a high, piercing voice.
    [12] In many nineteenth-century homes a cricket living near the warm kitchen stove could be heard chirping on winter evenings.
    [13] “Drowsiness” is the sleepy feeling just before sleep.
    [14] Leigh Hunt’s own sonnet on the same subject, written at the same sitting, is a separate poem and is not printed here.

16. 10.

    Zee is lettering the sestet in part 8. Which choice gives its rhyme scheme with the rhyming words?

    • CCDDEE: three couplets in a row, “never” with “frost”, “shrills” with “ever”, and then “lost” with “hills”.
    • CDCDEE: four lines lead to a closing couplet, “lost” and “hills”, as in a Shakespearean sonnet.
    • CDECDE: every line of the sestet has ten syllables, so the three rhymes must repeat in order.
    • CDECDE: “never” and “ever”, “frost” and “lost”, and “shrills” and “hills” rhyme in the same order twice.