The following poem is by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven (1845), lines 37–72. This extract begins with the raven’s first utterance of “Nevermore” and follows the speaker’s increasingly obsessive attempt to interpret it.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door— "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there and nothing more. [The raven enters and repeatedly answers the speaker's questions with the word "Nevermore." As the speaker's grief and agitation intensify, he finally orders the bird to leave.] "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!
Comparative texts
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
Comparative texts
Identify the natural comparison used to describe the speaker at the beginning of Text 1 and the natural comparison proposed at the beginning of Text 2.
The following is an excerpt from John Muir, The Yosemite (1912), Chapter 1, describing the Yosemite Fall as viewed from Fern Ledge during spring floods.
Identify the exact simile Muir uses to describe a single mass of water's "long streaming tail."
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company...
Comparative texts
Practice IB English A Lit Topic Literary Forms with authentic exam-style questions for both SL and HL students. This question bank focuses on the exact syllabus content for Literary Forms and mirrors Paper 1, 2 style where relevant.
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Analyse how the unchanged refrain “Nevermore” accumulates different meanings across the extract, and compare this with another literary text’s use of repetition.
Using your responses above, write a full response to the guiding question: How does Poe use personification, rationalisation, imagined narrative, physical staging, visual imagery, and refrain to transform the raven from comic visitor into a focus for the speaker’s grief and obsessive interpretation?
Identify the final word of Text 1 and the two-word phrase repeated at the beginning of Text 2’s closing couplet.
Describe how the chamber changes between the opening and closing of Text 1.
Explore how both poets introduce vulnerability through images of time, weather, and physical change.
Discuss how the raven’s final shadow and Shakespeare’s "eternal summer" offer contrasting representations of permanence.
Describe how each poem presents natural movement or change before making its final claim about lasting value.
Explore how the speakers’ perspectives develop from the opening comparison to the middle of each poem.
Discuss how each poem turns a temporary encounter with beauty into a lasting source of value.
Analyse how personification, structure, and the final lines of both poems shape their different accounts of permanence.
Using your responses above, write a full response to the guiding question: Compare how Wordsworth and Shakespeare use natural imagery, changing perspective, personification, structural turns, and self-conscious endings to transform temporary beauty into lasting value.
Describe the two contrasting impressions of the fall's movement Muir gives depending on the viewer's distance from it.
Explore how Muir's personification of the fall as a "grand, throbbing mountain heart" shapes the reader's sense of the waterfall as a living presence.
Discuss how Muir's diction shifts from violent, chaotic language ("hissing, clashing, seething") to language of order and beauty ("finest harmony") within the same passage.
Analyse how this passage's movement from apparent chaos to sudden, sunlit harmony could be compared to another literary text's treatment of order emerging from apparent disorder in the natural world.
In preparation for comparing this extract with a second literary work you have studied, write a full response to the guiding question: How does Muir use personification, contrasting perspective, and a shift from chaotic to harmonious diction to represent the waterfall as simultaneously violent and beautiful, and how might this technique be compared with another text's treatment of order emerging from natural disorder?
Describe the setting each speaker occupies at the poem's opening, wandering outdoors in Text 1 and seated indoors in Text 2.
Explore how personification serves opposite emotional purposes in each text, animating the daffodils as joyful company in Text 1 and animating the dying ember as a "ghost" in Text 2.
Discuss how each poem's sound patterning, Wordsworth's steady, dancing rhythm and Poe's internal rhyme and repetition, reinforces its contrasting emotional register.
Analyse how each speaker's solitude functions differently, becoming a source of "bliss" through memory in Text 1 and a site of mounting dread in Text 2.
Using your responses above, write a full response to the guiding question: Compare how Wordsworth and Poe use personification, sound, and solitude to construct two opposite emotional relationships between a speaker and their surroundings.
