自测题(诗歌)文学英语赏析

Text1

…

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

(Song of Myself)

Questions

1. Which of the following is the message Whitman is conveying to average man and woman?

A. People should love the earth and the sun and the animals.

B. People should love themselves for what they are and be themselves.

C. People should despise riches and give their wealth away to those in need.

2. Does Whitman use traditional device like regular meter and rhyme in this poem? What’s the form of the poem (sonnet or free verse or visual poetry)?

3. Identify the literary devices you find in this poem. Name the device, and note down one example.

参考答案

1. B．

2. No. It is a free verse.

3. Any ONE of the devices and the illustrative examples

Repetition:

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God…

Parallelism and repetition:

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with …

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Text 2

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put the crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good. Questions

1. These stanzas are taken from _________ by _________.

A. Ballad of Reading Gaol…Oscar Wilde

B. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone … W.H. Auden