AP Success - AP English Literature Poetry Analysis: Two Poems About Encountering Nature
Question 1
These two poems present encounters with nature, but the two poets handle those encounters very differently.
In a well-organized essay, distinguish between the attitudes (toward nature, toward the solitary individual, etc.) expressed in the poems and discuss the techniques that the poets use to present these attitudes.
In your response you should do the following: • Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation. • Select and use evidence from both poems to support your line of reasoning. • Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning. • Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument
"There was a boy" by William Wordsworth:
There was a boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander! – many a time, At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone, Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake; And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls That they might answer him.–And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call,–with quivering peals, And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause Of silence such as baffled his best skill: Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received Into the bosom of the steady lake.
"The Most of It" by Robert Frost:
He thought he kept the universe alone; For all the voice in answer he could wake Was but the mocking echo of his own From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake. Some morning from the boulder-broken beach He would cry out on life, that what it wants Is not its own love back in copy speech, But counter-love, original response. And nothing ever came of what he cried Unless it was the embodiment that crashed In the cliff's talus* on the other side, And then in the far-distant water splashed, But after a time allowed for it to swim, Instead of proving human when it neared And someone else additional to him, As a great buck it powerfully appeared, Pushing the crumpled water up ahead, And landed pouring like a waterfall, And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread, And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
*talus: rock debris at the bottom of a cliff
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