British Literature Passage Id's

Front 1

Johnson
"Inglan is a Bitch"
1991

Back 1

Inglan is a bitch
dere's no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch fi true
is whey wi a goh dhu 'bout it?

Front 2

Boland
"Listen. This is the Noise of Myth"
1986

Back 2

And then the woods flooded and buds
blunted from the chestnut and the foxglove
put its big leaves out and chaffinches
chinked and flirted in the branches of the ash.

Front 3

Boland
"Listen. This is the Noise of Myth"
1986

Back 3

O consolations of the craft.
How we put
the old poultices on the old sores,
the same mirrors to the old magic. Look.

Front 4

Boland
"Listen. This is the Noise of Myth"
1986

Back 4

legend, self-deception, sin, the sum
of human puproses and its end; remember
how our poetry depends on distance,
aspect: gravity will bend starlight.

Front 5

Dabydeen
"Coolie Odyssey"
1988

Back 5

Like the blasted land
unconquerable jungle or weed
That dragged the might of years from a man.

Front 6

Dabydeen
"Coolie Odyssey"
1988

Back 6

We mark your memories in songs
Fleshed in the emptiness of folk,
Poems that scrape the bowl and bone
In English basements far from home

Front 7

Dabydeen
"Coolie Odyssey"
1988

Back 7

Or confess the lust of beasts
In rare conceits
To congregations of the educated
Sipping wine, attentive between courses---
See the applesause fluttering from their fair hands
Like so many messy table napkins

Front 8

Walcott
"Ruins of a Great House"
1962

Back 8

That Albion too was once
A colony like ours, "part of the continent, piece of the main,"
Nook-shotten, rook o'erblown, deranged
By foaming channels and the vain expanse
Of bitter faction

Front 9

Walcott
"Ruins of a Great House"
1962

Back 9

It seems that the original crops were limes
Grown in the silt that clogs the river's skirt;

Front 10

Walcott
"A Far Cry from Africa"
1962

Back 10

Statistics justify and scholars sieze
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages expendable as Jews?

Front 11

Walcott
"A Far Cry from Africa"
1962

Back 11

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain

Front 12

Rushdie
"Is Nothing Sacred?"
1990

Back 12

The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and godmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room.

Front 13

Ng˜ug˜i
"Decolonising the Mind"
1986

Back 13

"Language was not a mere string of words. It had a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning

Front 14

Ng˜ug˜i
"Decolonising the Mind"
1986

Back 14

Learning, for a colonial child, became a cerebral activity and not an emotionally felt experience

Front 15

Heaney
"Englands of the Mind"
1980

Back 15

I have simply presumed to share in that exploration through the medium which England has, for better or worse, impressed upon us all, the English language itself

Front 16

Heaney
"Punishment"
1975

Back 16

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge

Front 17

Heaney
"Punishment"
1975

Back 17

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain firkin:

Front 18

Heaney
"Digging"
1966

Back 18

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Front 19

Larkin
"Annus Mirabilis"
1967

Back 19

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

Front 20

Larkin
"Church Going"
1954

Back 20

Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die

Front 21

Larkin
"Church Going"
1954

Back 21

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Front 22

Beckett
"Krapp's Last Tape"
1958

Back 22

Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.

Front 23

Page
"Ecce Homo"
1946

Back 23

The flesh that covered the bone
seemed bone itself

Front 24

Thomas
"A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London"
1946

Back 24

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

Front 25

Thomas
"Fern Hill"
1946

Back 25

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Front 26

W.H. Auden
"In Memory of Yeats"
1939
I

Back 26

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

Front 27

W.H. Auden
"In Memory of Yeats"
1939
II

Back 27

or poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth

Front 28

W.H. Auden
"In Memory of Yeats"
1939
III

Back 28

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Front 29

Virginia Woolf
"To the Lighthouse"
1927

Back 29

who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?

Front 30

Virginia Woolf
"To the Lighthouse"
1927

Back 30

t was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought

Front 31

Virginia Woolf
"To the Lighthouse"
1927

Back 31

It partook . . . of eternity . . . there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out

Front 32

Virginia Woolf
"Modern Fiction"
1925

Back 32

We do not come to write better; all that we can be said to do is keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle

Front 33

Virginia Woolf
"Modern Fiction"
1925

Back 33

life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end

Front 34

Yeats
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
1890

Back 34

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Front 35

Yeats
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
1890

Back 35

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

Front 36

Yeats
"Easter 1916"
1916

Back 36

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument

Front 37

Yeats
"Easter 1916"
1916

Back 37

hat is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.

Front 38

Yeats
"Leda and the Swan"
1924

Back 38

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs , her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

Front 39

Yeats
"Leda and the Swan"
1924

Back 39

And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

Front 40

Yeats
"Under Ben Bulben"
1939

Back 40

Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.

Front 41

Yeats
"Under Ben Bulben"
1939

Back 41

Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.

Front 42

Yeats
"Under Ben Bulben"
1939

Back 42

That were beaten into clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.

Front 43

Yeats
"Under Ben Bulben"
1939

Back 43

By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut

Front 44

T.S. Eliot
"The Wasteland"
1922

Back 44

what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Front 45

T.S. Eliot
"The Wasteland"
1922

Back 45

I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?

Front 46

T.S. Eliot
"The Wasteland"
1922

Back 46

There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain

Front 47

T.S. Eliot
"The Wasteland"
1922

Back 47

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

Front 48

T.S. Eliot
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
1915, 1917

Back 48

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

Front 49

Eliot
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"
1919

Back 49

One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else

Front 50

Eliot
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"
1919

Back 50

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape form emotion

Front 51

Pound
"Imagism & Vorticism"
1913, 1916

Back 51

It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works...

Front 52

Pound
"Imagism & Vorticism"
1913, 1916

Back 52

all poetic language is the language of exploration

Front 53

Fussell
"The Great War and Modern Memory"
1975

Back 53

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected

Front 54

Owen
"Dulce et Decorum Est"
1920

Back 54

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind

Front 55

Owen
"Anthem for Doomed Youth"
1920

Back 55

"What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes

Front 56

Owen
"Strange Meeting"
1920

Back 56

They have challenged Death and dared him face to face

Front 57

Hardy
"Channel Firing"
1914

Back 57

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of awakened hounds
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds

Front 58

Hardy
"The Darkling Thrush"
1901

Back 58

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom

Front 59

Conrad
"Outpost of Progress"
1897

Back 59

The believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make

Front 60

Conrad
"Outpost of Progress"
1897

Back 60

He knew nothing about him. What was he capable of? There was a surprising flash of violent emotion within him

Front 61

Conrad
"Heart of Darkness"
1902

Back 61

The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life

Front 62

Conrad
"Heart of Darkness"
1902

Back 62

It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman

Front 63

Conrad
"Heart of Darkness"
1902

Back 63

The horror!’ He was a remarkable man

Front 64

Kipling
"The White Man's Burden"
1899

Back 64

Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Front 65

Kipling
"England and the English"
1920

Back 65

Since these masters of ours have not yet quite the old untroubled assurance of power and knowledge that made Rome so tolerant

Front 66

Kipling
"The Mark of the Beast"
1891

Back 66

His knowledge of the natives was, of course, limited, and he complained of the difficulties with the language

Front 67

Kipling
"England and the English"
1920

Back 67

This world of ours, which some us in their zeal to do better than good have helped to create, but which we must all inherit, is not a new world, but the old world grown harder. The wheel has come full circle