BLS FINAL EXAM LATEST VERSION
– REAL EXAM QUESTIONS – A
GRADE
The first time that the sun rose on thine oath/To love me, I look forward to the moon/to
slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon/And quickly tied to make a lasting
troth...For perfect strains may float/'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced-/And
great souls, at one stroke, may do and dote. - Answer-Sonnets of the Portuguese,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Showcases her doubts of his love for her,
She thought he'd be done w/ her from the start,
Even a master musician can create from something broken
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...I love thee with thy breath/Smiles, tears, all
of my life! - and, if God choose,/ I shall but love thee better after death - Answer-
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Gr-r-r - there go, my heart's abhorrence!/Water your damned flowerports, do!/ If hate
killed men, Brother Lawrence/God's blood, would not mine kill you!...When he finishes
reflection,/Knife and fork he never lays/Cross-wise, to my recollection,/As do I, in Jesu's
praise...Or there's Satan! - one might venture/Pledge one's should to him, yet
leave/Such a flaw in the indenture/As he'd miss till, past retrieve... - Answer-The
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister: Robert Browning
Watches Brother Lawrence's gardening and hates him,
in accusing him off all these things, the speaker actually reveals his own nature to the
audience,
reveals his own hypocrisy,
reveals how the narrator is vs how he wants to be perceived
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall/Looking as if she were alive...The thanked
men-good! But thanked/somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked/My gift of a nine-
hundered-years-old-name/With anybody's gift...Will't you please rise? We'll meet/The
company below, then... - Answer-My Last Duchess: Robert Browning
The speaker commands to have his duchess killed bc pride,
she values e/ thing she loves the same as him and he can't stand it,
instead of talking to her (stopping to her level), he just kills her,
the speaker is talking to the guy who is arranging his next marriage
I am a part of all that I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch
,wherethrough / Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades /
Forever and forever when I move. / How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust
unburnished, not to shine in use! ...you and I are old; / Old age hath yet his honor and
his toil. / Death closes all; but something ere the end, / Some work of noble note, may
yet be done, / Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods...One equal temper of heroic
hearts, / Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and
not to yield. - Answer-Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Negative word choice in the first several lines reveals his downwards mental state,
He has become merely a name,
He will leave e/thing to his son bc his son is good at his work (implying U. isn't when at
home),
Talks to his sailers and will leave once more bc they've lost a lot but gained a lot and it's
worth it
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,/Confusions of a wasted youth/Forgive them
when they fail in truth,/And in thy wisdom make me wise... - Answer-In memoriam:
Alfred Lord Tennyon ***
I held it Truth, with him who sings/To one clear Harp in diver's tones,/That men may rise
on stepping stones/Of their dead selves to higher things...Behold the man that loved
and lost,/But all he was is overworn. - Answer-In memoriam: Alfred Lord Tennyson ***
I envy not in any moods/The captive void of noble range,/The linnet born within the
cage/That never knew the summer woods...I hold it true, whate're befall; I feel it, when I
sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than to never have loved at all - Answer-
In memoriam: Alfred Lord Tennyson ***
O, yet we trust that somehow good/Will be the final goal of ill...So runs my dream; but
what am I? An infant crying in the night;/An infant crying for the light,/And with no
language but a cry. - Answer-In Memoriam: Alfred Lord Tennyson ***
The wish, that of the living whole/No life may fail beyond the grave,/Derives it not from
what we have/The likest God w/in the soul?/Are God and Nature then at Strife,/That
nature lends such evil dreams?/So careful of the type she seems,/So careless of the
single life...I falter where I firmly trod,/And falling with the weight of cares/Upon the great
world's alter-stairs/That slope thorugh darkness up to God... - Answer-In Memoriam:
Alfred Lord Tennyson
"So careful of the type?" but no./From scarped cliff and quarried stone/She cries, "A
thousand types are gone; I care for nothing, all shall go"...What hope of answer, or
redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil. - Answer-In Memorium: Alfred Lord Tennyson
Peace; come away: the song of woe/Is after all an earthly song...I hear it now, and o'er,
and o'er,/Eternal greetings to the dead;/ And "Ave, Ave, Ave" said,/ "Adieu, adieu,"
forevermore. - Answer-In Memorium: Alfred Lord Tennyson
, The world is charged with the grandeur of God...Why do men then now not reck his
rod?/Generations have trod, have trod, have trod...And for all this, nature is never
spent... - Answer-God's Grandeur, Gerard Hopkins ***
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,/More pangs will, schooled at
forepangs, wilder wring...all/Life death does end and each day dies with sleep - Answer-
No Worst, there is None: Gerard Hopkins ***
I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield—I love it, because I have lived in it a full
and delightful life,—momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been
petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of
communion with what is bright and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with
what I reverence; with what I delight in,—with an original, a vigorous, an expanded
mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel
I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure, and it is
like looking on the necessity of death." - Answer-Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte
She leaves Thornfield here bc his actions contradict her own values: Jane is true to
herself and ultimately gives up what she longs for - company and to be loved - so that
she would not neglect her own values/opinions
Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a
machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my
lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor,
obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as
much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty
and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me
to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom,
conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just
as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are!
- Answer-Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte
Again, reaffirms Jane's sticking to her beliefs. Here, it's about sticking up for herself in
the face of adversity (i.e. Rochester's opinions). It's about the equality of men/women
and how Jane considers herself to be independent and self-reliant because she is a
governess and underwent hardships
In flanders fields the poppies blow,/Between crosses, row on row...Take up our quarrel
with the foe:/To you from failing hands we throw/The torch... - Answer-In Flanders
Fields: John McCrae
WE gave up our lives, now it's your turn as the living
We were loved and lost, so don't give that up bc we sacrificed
