A poem and the time it came from

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818, with a period note)

   Period note:
   [1] Shelley published this sonnet in January 1818 in The Examiner, a London weekly, after writing it in a friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith.
   [2] Europe had just watched the fall of Napoleon, the French emperor who had conquered much of the continent and was finally defeated in 1815.
   [3] In the same years Europeans were fascinated by ancient Egypt, and the British Museum was acquiring a gigantic stone head of the pharaoh Ramesses II, which reached London in 1818.
   [4] Ozymandias was the name that ancient Greek writers gave to Ramesses II, one of the most powerful and longest-ruling pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who ordered enormous statues of himself.

   The poem:
   [5] I met a traveller from an antique land / Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert...
   [6] Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
   [7] And on the pedestal these words appear: / ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
   [8] Nothing beside remains.
   [9] Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.

   Word notes:
   [10] “Antique” means ancient, “trunkless” means without the rest of the body, and a “visage” is a face.
   [11] The sculptor “read” the ruler’s passions, meaning that the artist understood the ruler’s pride and cruelty and carved them exactly into the stone.
   [12] “The hand that mocked them” is the sculptor’s hand, which copied, and perhaps quietly mocked, those passions.
   [13] A pedestal is the base of a statue, and “ye Mighty” addresses other powerful rulers.
   [14] “Colossal” means enormous, like the giant statues of the ancient world, and a wreck is something broken, shattered and ruined.

2. 1.

   Ari is drawing an arrow from the period note in part 2, about an emperor’s recent fall. Which part of the poem does that note help explain most directly?

   • Part 9, the empty sand, because the note says Napoleon was buried in the Egyptian desert.
   • Part 7, the boast “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”, set against the ruin.
   • Part 5, “I met a traveller from an antique land”, because Napoleon also traveled far from France.
   • Part 4, which explains that Ozymandias was the Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II.
3. 2.

   Bo is writing the issue of the time in the margin. Which issue of Shelley’s time does the poem speak to most directly?

   • How the great works of powerful rulers survive for thousands of years and still command respect.
   • How factory machines in the 1900s were replacing the work of skilled stone carvers.
   • Whether museums should bring ancient statues from Egypt to London for the public to see.
   • How the power and pride of great rulers, so recently on show in Europe, do not last.
4. 3.

   Esme is reading part 7 in its time. What does “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” come to mean by the end of the poem?

   • Powerful rulers should despair, not because the works are great, but because even great works fall to ruin.
   • Rulers like Ramesses II ordered enormous statues of themselves, as part 4 of the notes says.
   • The poem agrees with the ruler and invites readers to admire the might of ancient Egypt.
   • Other kings should despair because they cannot build anything as large as this ruler’s statues.

5. I, Too (printed as “Epilogue”) (Langston Hughes, 1926, with a period note)

   Period note:
   [1] Langston Hughes first printed this poem in 1925 and placed it at the very end of his first collection, The Weary Blues, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926, under the title “Epilogue”.
   [2] During the 1920s, segregation laws in the Southern states, and unwritten customs in many Northern cities, kept Black Americans out of numerous restaurants, hotels and dining rooms that served white customers.
   [3] In 1925 Hughes was employed as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel, clearing the tables of guests in a dining room where he could not have been served as a guest himself.
   [4] The poem’s opening line deliberately answers Walt Whitman’s celebrated poem “I Hear America Singing”, which describes ordinary Americans at their work, each one singing.

   The poem:
   [5] I, too, sing America.
   [6] I am the darker brother. / They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes, / But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.
   [7] Tomorrow, / I’ll sit at the table / When company comes. / Nobody’ll dare / Say to me, / “Eat in the kitchen,” / Then.
   [8] Besides, / They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed,—
   [9] I, too, am America.

   Word notes:
   [10] “Company” means guests who have been invited to share a meal in the household.
   [11] An epilogue is a concluding section placed at the end of a book, a play or a long poem.
   [12] Hughes later reprinted the poem with the title “I, Too”, which is how most readers recognize it today.
   [13] The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of Black American literature, music and visual art centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during the 1920s.
   [14] The dash after “ashamed” and the stanza breaks are printed exactly as they appeared in the 1926 edition.

6. 4.

   Jun reads the note in part 3: Hughes worked as a busboy in a hotel dining room. Which part of the poem does that note help explain?

   • Part 6, “They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes”.
   • Part 2, which explains that segregation kept Black Americans out of many dining rooms.
   • Part 5, “I, too, sing America,” because a busboy might sing while clearing the tables.
   • Part 8, because the note says that Hughes felt ashamed of working in a hotel dining room.
7. 5.

   Kira is naming the issue of the time in the margin. Which issue of the 1920s does this poem speak to?

   • Segregation: Black Americans being shut out of shared tables and of full belonging in American life.
   • How Black Americans of the 1920s accepted a separate place and stopped hoping for change.
   • The end of slavery in 1865 and the first years of freedom just after the Civil War.
   • The long working hours of hotel staff, who had no time to sit down and eat with the guests.

8. Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818, with a period note)

   Period note:
   [1] Shelley published this sonnet in January 1818 in The Examiner, a London weekly, after writing it in a friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith.
   [2] Europe had just watched the fall of Napoleon, the French emperor who had conquered much of the continent and was finally defeated in 1815.
   [3] In the same years Europeans were fascinated by ancient Egypt, and the British Museum was acquiring a gigantic stone head of the pharaoh Ramesses II, which reached London in 1818.
   [4] Ozymandias was the name that ancient Greek writers gave to Ramesses II, one of the most powerful and longest-ruling pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who ordered enormous statues of himself.

   The poem:
   [5] I met a traveller from an antique land / Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert...
   [6] Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
   [7] And on the pedestal these words appear: / ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
   [8] Nothing beside remains.
   [9] Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.

   Word notes:
   [10] “Antique” means ancient, “trunkless” means without the rest of the body, and a “visage” is a face.
   [11] The sculptor “read” the ruler’s passions, meaning that the artist understood the ruler’s pride and cruelty and carved them exactly into the stone.
   [12] “The hand that mocked them” is the sculptor’s hand, which copied, and perhaps quietly mocked, those passions.
   [13] A pedestal is the base of a statue, and “ye Mighty” addresses other powerful rulers.
   [14] “Colossal” means enormous, like the giant statues of the ancient world, and a wreck is something broken, shattered and ruined.

9. 6.

   Milo reads the note in part 3: a gigantic stone head of Ramesses II reached London in 1818. Which part of the poem would that news have made especially vivid?

   • Part 8, “Nothing beside remains”, because the museum had taken everything else away.
   • Part 4, which names Ozymandias as Ramesses II, the ruler whose stone head reached London.
   • Part 5, because the note says the traveler who brought the head to London told Shelley the story in person.
   • Part 6, the “shattered visage” half sunk in the sand, with its frown and its “sneer of cold command”.

10. I, Too (printed as “Epilogue”) (Langston Hughes, 1926, with a period note)

    Period note:
    [1] Langston Hughes first printed this poem in 1925 and placed it at the very end of his first collection, The Weary Blues, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926, under the title “Epilogue”.
    [2] During the 1920s, segregation laws in the Southern states, and unwritten customs in many Northern cities, kept Black Americans out of numerous restaurants, hotels and dining rooms that served white customers.
    [3] In 1925 Hughes was employed as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel, clearing the tables of guests in a dining room where he could not have been served as a guest himself.
    [4] The poem’s opening line deliberately answers Walt Whitman’s celebrated poem “I Hear America Singing”, which describes ordinary Americans at their work, each one singing.

    The poem:
    [5] I, too, sing America.
    [6] I am the darker brother. / They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes, / But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.
    [7] Tomorrow, / I’ll sit at the table / When company comes. / Nobody’ll dare / Say to me, / “Eat in the kitchen,” / Then.
    [8] Besides, / They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed,—
    [9] I, too, am America.

    Word notes:
    [10] “Company” means guests who have been invited to share a meal in the household.
    [11] An epilogue is a concluding section placed at the end of a book, a play or a long poem.
    [12] Hughes later reprinted the poem with the title “I, Too”, which is how most readers recognize it today.
    [13] The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of Black American literature, music and visual art centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during the 1920s.
    [14] The dash after “ashamed” and the stanza breaks are printed exactly as they appeared in the 1926 edition.

11. 7.

    Noah reads the note in part 4: the first line answers Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”. Which parts of the poem does that note explain?

    • Part 7, “I’ll sit at the table”, because Whitman’s poem is about a dinner party.
    • Parts 5 and 9, the two “I, too” lines that claim a place in Whitman’s song.
    • Part 12, which says that Hughes later gave the poem the title “I, Too”.
    • Part 6, because the note says that Whitman’s poem sends workers to eat in the kitchen.

12. Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818, with a period note)

    Period note:
    [1] Shelley published this sonnet in January 1818 in The Examiner, a London weekly, after writing it in a friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith.
    [2] Europe had just watched the fall of Napoleon, the French emperor who had conquered much of the continent and was finally defeated in 1815.
    [3] In the same years Europeans were fascinated by ancient Egypt, and the British Museum was acquiring a gigantic stone head of the pharaoh Ramesses II, which reached London in 1818.
    [4] Ozymandias was the name that ancient Greek writers gave to Ramesses II, one of the most powerful and longest-ruling pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who ordered enormous statues of himself.

    The poem:
    [5] I met a traveller from an antique land / Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert...
    [6] Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
    [7] And on the pedestal these words appear: / ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
    [8] Nothing beside remains.
    [9] Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.

    Word notes:
    [10] “Antique” means ancient, “trunkless” means without the rest of the body, and a “visage” is a face.
    [11] The sculptor “read” the ruler’s passions, meaning that the artist understood the ruler’s pride and cruelty and carved them exactly into the stone.
    [12] “The hand that mocked them” is the sculptor’s hand, which copied, and perhaps quietly mocked, those passions.
    [13] A pedestal is the base of a statue, and “ye Mighty” addresses other powerful rulers.
    [14] “Colossal” means enormous, like the giant statues of the ancient world, and a wreck is something broken, shattered and ruined.

13. 8.

    Pia is linking the poem to its moment. Europe had just seen an emperor rise and fall. How does the traveler’s report fit that moment?

    • It reports the discovery of a new site in Egypt, celebrating the progress of European science.
    • It praises strong rulers like Napoleon and hopes that a new emperor will soon rise in Europe.
    • It shows a ruler’s proud boast outlasted by the desert, a warning for an age that had just watched an empire collapse.
    • It was written in a friendly competition with Horace Smith and printed in a London weekly.

14. I, Too (printed as “Epilogue”) (Langston Hughes, 1926, with a period note)

    Period note:
    [1] Langston Hughes first printed this poem in 1925 and placed it at the very end of his first collection, The Weary Blues, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926, under the title “Epilogue”.
    [2] During the 1920s, segregation laws in the Southern states, and unwritten customs in many Northern cities, kept Black Americans out of numerous restaurants, hotels and dining rooms that served white customers.
    [3] In 1925 Hughes was employed as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel, clearing the tables of guests in a dining room where he could not have been served as a guest himself.
    [4] The poem’s opening line deliberately answers Walt Whitman’s celebrated poem “I Hear America Singing”, which describes ordinary Americans at their work, each one singing.

    The poem:
    [5] I, too, sing America.
    [6] I am the darker brother. / They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes, / But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.
    [7] Tomorrow, / I’ll sit at the table / When company comes. / Nobody’ll dare / Say to me, / “Eat in the kitchen,” / Then.
    [8] Besides, / They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed,—
    [9] I, too, am America.

    Word notes:
    [10] “Company” means guests who have been invited to share a meal in the household.
    [11] An epilogue is a concluding section placed at the end of a book, a play or a long poem.
    [12] Hughes later reprinted the poem with the title “I, Too”, which is how most readers recognize it today.
    [13] The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of Black American literature, music and visual art centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during the 1920s.
    [14] The dash after “ashamed” and the stanza breaks are printed exactly as they appeared in the 1926 edition.

15. 9.

    Tala notices that the poem looks ahead to “Tomorrow”. What change in its society does the speaker expect?

    • An end to being sent away: one day the speaker will sit at the shared table, and no one will dare object.
    • The speaker will grow up and become old enough to join the adults at dinner.
    • A raise in pay, so that the speaker can afford to eat in an expensive restaurant.
    • Nothing will change, so the speaker plans to keep eating alone in the kitchen.
16. 10.

    Zee reads part 6 in its time: “But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.” What does this reaction show?

    • The kitchen food is better than the dining-room food, so the speaker is lucky.
    • The speaker is training as an athlete and eating well to become physically strong.
    • The speaker has given up caring about the dining room and is happy to stay away from it.
    • Quiet strength: refusing to be crushed, the speaker grows stronger while waiting.