Second Set for English (H/PG)

1. ‘He is called by thy name, / For he calls himself a lamb.’—Where are these lines taken from? Briefly comment on these lines.
These lines are taken from Blake’s The Lamb.
These lines convey a tone of Christian theology. Christ is at once God and man and he is called by the name of the lamb as an emblem of his meek and mild nature.

2. ‘These beauteous forms / Through a long absence, have not been to me / As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye.’—Explain the above lines.
In these lines from Tintern Abbey, the poet says that the beautiful scenes and objects—the murmuring Wye, the lonely wooded hills, orchard, the hedge-rows running wild once viewed and enjoyed by himself had never been absent from his mind. They left a lasting impression on the poet’s mind.

3. ‘Behold! Her bosom, and half her side-- / A sight to dream of, not to tell!’—Where are these lines taken from? Who is the person referred here? What does the poet mean by ‘a sight to dream of, not to tell’?
These lines are taken from Coleridge’s long narrative poem, Christabel.
Geraldine, the demon-woman is referred here.
The naked breast and a side of Geraldine’s body were so unearthly that they beggared description. The poet thinks that this sight is like a nightmare seen in a dream and not a matter to describe.

4. ‘Like an unbodied joy whose race is just began.’—Who is called ‘an unbodied joy’ and why?
In Shelley’s To a Skylark, the skylark is called ‘an unbodied joy’.
The skylark soars high up in the sky and pours forth a shower of melody. It seems hardly a bird of flesh and blood. To the poet’s imagination, the bird is a bodiless spirit of joy, a thing of abstract beauty.

5. ‘Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget / What thou among the leaves hast never known,’—Explain the quoted lines.
Here, in the quoted lines from Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, the poet displays his deep desire to escape the sorrows and sufferings of this world. The song of the nightingale reminds the poet of the unhappy state of affairs in the world. But the bird itself is quite unaware of the misery and anxiety of the world.

6. ‘Life piled on life / Were all too little, and of one to me / Little remains:’—Who is the speaker? What does the speaker mean to say?
The speaker is Ulysses, the legendary king of Ithaca.
Human life is very short and Ulysses has only a few more years to live. He would make the best use of this remnant of life left to him. Even if he would have possessed a number of lives he would not be able to reach the goal of his life.

7. Consider 'The Rape of the Lock' as a mock heroic poem.
The Rape of the Lock is an appropriate example of mock-heroic epic in English literature. Here Pope uses an absurd trifling subject—the theft of Belinda’s lock of hair, and treats it in a serious manner as it is done in an epic. Naturally it produces a humorous satiric effect.

8. ‘Where can we find two better hemispheres / Without sharp North, without declining West’—What are referred to as ‘hemispheres’? What does the poet mean by ‘sharp North’ and ‘declining West’?
The face of each of the lovers has been referred to by the word ‘hemispheres’.
The expression ‘sharp North’ means the cold north winds and ‘declining West’ means the western horizon where the sun declines. It seems to suggest that the physical world and the world created by the lovers are poles apart.

9. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’—Explain the quoted line.
This is the opening line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. XVIII. Here the question implies that the beauty of the poet’s friend cannot be best described by comparing it with the beauty of a summer’s day. ‘Thee’ in the quoted line refers to the young man, of high birth and beauty, who was the poet’s friend and patron.

10. ‘But though the whole world turn to coal / Then chiefly lives’—What chiefly lives? What does the poet mean by this expression? What comparison is implicit here?
Herbert in his poem Virtue asserts that only soul ‘chiefly lives’.
By ‘chiefly lives’ the poet means that the soul lives after death.
The implicit comparison suggested here is that the soul is like a seasoned timber which cannot be burnt and changed into coal.