Instructions: Write your response in ink and use an exam booklet. I ask also that you hand in this exam along with your blue book(s), though you should feel free to write all over this paper if you wish.
Provide me with a detailed reading of the following poem, paying special attention to such issues as the following: the reasons the poet chose the verse form he did; the relation between the form of the poem and its content; the effect of such stylistic devices as alliteration, assonance, regular, internal and slant rhymes, meter variation, caesuras, enjambement, line breaks, etc.; and the relation of the poem to its literary historical context. You may also comment on the design but be sure always to relate the design to the poem itself, which should always remain your focus. Note: for a sample close reading of this sonnet click here.
DANTE GABRIEL
ROSSETTI
from The House of Life
A Sonnet is a moment's monument—
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own intricate fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,--its converse, to what Power 'tis due:--
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
The design for "The Sonnet" was executed as a present for Dante Gabriel RossettiÕs mother on her eightieth birthday (27 April 1880). It is supposed to have been copied into David MainÕs edition of A Treasury of English Sonnets, which D. G. Rossetti gave to his mother as a present. This book was in William Michael RossettiÕs possession in 1899 but has since disappeared. The lost original design is known from two printed copies made from it. Description: A winged female figure, inscribed in the drawing as "ANIMA," flies horizontally to the right. Her right arm holds a lyre; her head is crowned with a laurel wreath. The left hand is holding a winged hourglass, which is being placed in a flowering bush. Inscription at the bottom: "D. G. Rossetti. Pro Matre fecit Apr: 27.1880."
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