Poetry: extracts, rhyme scheme and paraphrase (Q3 A)

Q3 A and how to read a poetic extractOften examined

Q3 A gives you two poetic extracts (I and II, joined by OR). You choose one and answer its three questions, 2 marks each (2+2+2 = 6). An extract is usually 4 to 8 lines from a poem in the NBF Grade 12 textbook, but the questions can be answered from the lines alone, so a student who reads carefully can score full marks even on a poem he has not studied.

Step 1: read for the literal meaning first

Before you look for devices, understand what the lines actually say. Ask: who or what is described, what is happening, where, and when. Put the lines into ordinary word order in your head. For example, "The music in my heart I bore" is simply "I carried the music in my heart".

Step 2: find the speaker, tone, mood and theme

Speaker

The voice talking in the poem. Often "I" (the poet), but it can be a character. In "My heart be brave" the speaker is talking to his own heart.

Addressee

The person or thing spoken to, for example the reader ("Behold her"), the heart, or a sleeper ("Awake!").

Tone

The poet's attitude towards the subject: admiring, sad, angry, bitter, hopeful, mocking (ironic), serious. Tone belongs to the poet.

Mood

The feeling the lines create in the reader: peaceful, gloomy, tense, joyful, mysterious. Mood belongs to the reader.

Subject

What the poem is about on the surface: a girl singing in a field, the sea, a walk through London.

Theme

The general idea about life behind the subject: the lasting power of beauty, the shortness of life, the suffering of the poor. Write a theme as a full statement, not one word.

Central idea

The main point of the extract in one or two sentences. In FBISE questions it means almost the same as message.

Message

The lesson or truth the poet wants the reader to take away.

Step 3: mark the extract before you answer

1. Write a small letter (a, b, c) at the end of each line for the rhyme scheme.
2. Underline repeated words, sound patterns (alliteration) and any "like" or "as" (simile).
3. Circle old words (thy, ne'er, o'er, yon) and write the modern word above them.
4. Number the lines, so that "the last two lines" or "the first two lines" are clear.

I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

Rhyme scheme: labelling end soundsOften examined

Rhyme is the repetition of the same ending sound in two words: night and flight, heard and bird. The sound from the last stressed vowel to the end must match: h-ill and st-ill. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, written with small letters.

The labelling rules

1. Look only at the last word of each line.
2. Give the first line the letter a.
3. If a later line ends with the same sound, give it the same letter. If it ends with a new sound, give it the next unused letter (b, then c, then d).
4. Judge by sound, not spelling: through and blue rhyme; cough and though do not.
5. Write the scheme in small letters with no spaces or commas: abab, aabb, abcb. For more than one stanza, separate stanzas with a space or comma: abab cdcd.
6. In your answer, show the rhyming words in brackets after the letters. This proves you did not guess.

Other kinds of rhyme

Perfect (full) rhyme

The ending sounds match exactly: heard / bird, still / hill, Night / Flight.

Slant rhyme (half rhyme, near rhyme)

The sounds are close but not exactly the same: the vowel differs slightly or only the final consonant matches. Examples: eye / symmetry (Blake, "The Tyger"), soul / all, work / dark. Treat a clear slant rhyme as a rhyme, give it the same letter, and you may add "(slant rhyme)" after the words. Words with no sound in common, such as roars / cloud, do not rhyme at all.

Eye rhyme

Words that look alike but sound different: love / move, food / good. Blake uses these sometimes. In an exam, give them the same letter only if the poet clearly meant them to rhyme, and say "eye rhyme".

Internal rhyme

A rhyme inside a line, not at the end: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary". It does not change the rhyme scheme letters.

Masculine rhyme

Rhyme on one final stressed syllable: sang / rang.

Feminine rhyme

Rhyme on two syllables, the last one unstressed: ending / bending (Solitary Reaper, stanza 4).

Worked examples

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!

The rain came down on Islamabad,
The Margalla hills turned green;
The children ran out, loud and glad,
The brightest day they'd seen.

Metre, stanza names and kinds of poems

Metre (meter) is the regular beat of a line of poetry, made of stressed (strong, marked /) and unstressed (weak, marked x) syllables. A group of syllables that repeats is a foot. You do not need to scan whole poems in the exam, but you must know the names for MCQs and for describing a poem.

Iambic pentameter

Five iambs in a line (ten syllables, weak-strong five times). The most common metre in English poetry: sonnets, Shakespeare's plays, FitzGerald's Rubaiyat.

Blank verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" speech is in blank verse.

Free verse

Poetry with no fixed metre and no regular rhyme. The line breaks and repetition give it shape.

Enjambment

A sentence that runs on from one line to the next without a pause: "The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon / Turns Ashes" (the subject is in one line, its verb in the next).

Caesura

A pause in the middle of a line, usually at a comma or full stop: "In every voice: in every ban".

Refrain

A line or group of lines repeated at the end of stanzas, like a chorus.

Stanza names

A stanza is a group of lines forming a unit of a poem, like a paragraph in prose. It is named by the number of its lines.

Kinds of poems

Poetic devices: recap and how to answerOften examined

The full notes on figures of speech (definitions, many examples, and MCQs) are in English unit 11. This section is a quick recap using the textbook poems, and shows how to write the 2-mark answer to "Identify any poetic device used in the stanza and explain it".

The three-step answer (name, show, effect)

1. Name the device.
2. Show it: quote the exact words from the extract in inverted commas.
3. Explain the effect: what is compared or stressed, and why the poet uses it (picture, feeling, emphasis, music).

How to paraphrase two lines (2 marks)Often examined

To paraphrase is to rewrite the lines of a poem in plain modern prose, keeping the full meaning but using ordinary word order and your own words. It is not a summary (shorter) and not an explanation (which adds comments). The National Curriculum SLO is "Use paraphrasing skills to paraphrase a poem", and every new-syllabus extract in 2025 and 2026 had one paraphrase question.

The rules

1. Prose order: subject, verb, object. "The music in my heart I bore" becomes "I carried the music in my heart".
2. Modern words: change old or poetic words (thy, ne'er, o'er, yon, behold, anon) into today's English.
3. Keep every idea: each image and each detail of both lines must appear. Do not drop anything.
4. Add nothing: no opinion ("This is very beautiful"), no background, no moral. Only what the lines say.
5. Keep the person: if the poet says "I", you may keep "I" or change to "the poet" (third person). Both are accepted; be consistent.
6. Make figures clear: you may open a metaphor gently ("the Hunter of the East" becomes "the rising sun, like a hunter,") so the meaning is plain.
7. Length: one or two complete sentences, about the same length as the lines or a little longer. Use correct punctuation and grammar.
8. Tense: keep the tense of the lines ("I saw her" stays past).

Method in four steps

1. Copy the two lines in rough work and mark the subject and verb.
2. Replace every difficult word with a simple one.
3. Rearrange into normal sentence order and join the lines into one or two sentences.
4. Check: have I kept all the meaning, added nothing, and written correct English.

Worked examples

Answering message, central idea and feelings questionsOften examined

These questions test understanding (U level). They appear as: "What message is the poet conveying?", "Describe the central idea of the extract", "What feelings are expressed in ...?", "What effect does the poet create by ...?", "Why might the poet compare ...?"

The answer pattern (2 to 3 sentences, 40 to 70 words)

1. Sentence 1: the direct answer, using the words of the question: "The central idea of the extract is that ..." / "The poet conveys the message that ..." / "The line expresses feelings of ..."
2. Sentence 2: the proof, with a short quoted phrase from the extract: "This is clear when he says ..."
3. Sentence 3: the wider meaning, a short link to life or the theme: "It teaches us that ..."

Imagery questionsOften examined

Imagery is the use of descriptive words that appeal to the senses so that the reader can see, hear, feel, smell or taste what the poet describes. The model paper asked "How does the poet use imagery to portray the transition from night to morning?" and "Explain the use of imagery in the above extract"; the 2026 Set D paper asked "Explain the use of imagery in given extract".

The answer pattern

1. Say what the poet describes and name the kind(s) of imagery.
2. Quote two short phrases and say what each makes us see or hear.
3. End with the effect: the picture or mood created (wonder, fear, loneliness, energy).

The Solitary Reaper (William Wordsworth)Often examined

Poet and background

William Wordsworth (1770 to 1850) was a leading English Romantic poet. With S. T. Coleridge he published Lyrical Ballads (1798), which brought simple language and ordinary country people into poetry. For Wordsworth, poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings ... recollected in tranquillity" (calm memory).

He wrote "The Solitary Reaper" in 1805 (published 1807) after a walking tour of the Scottish Highlands with his sister Dorothy in 1803. The idea came partly from a friend's travel notes about a woman reaping alone and singing in Erse (Scottish Gaelic), a language Wordsworth did not understand. So the poet hears a beautiful song but cannot know its words, and this mystery is the heart of the poem.

Solitary

alone, lonely

Reaper

a person who cuts ripe crops (wheat, barley) with a sickle

Highland Lass

a young girl from the Highlands, the mountainous north of Scotland

Sickle

a curved hand blade for cutting crops (in Urdu, darranti)

Hebrides

a group of remote islands off the north-west coast of Scotland

Vale profound

a deep valley

Plaintive numbers

sad verses, a sad song

Lay

a simple song or poem

Form and rhyme scheme

A lyric in four stanzas of eight lines (octaves), mostly iambic tetrameter (four beats a line); the fourth line of each stanza is shorter (three beats). Rhyme scheme: stanzas 1 and 4 are abcbddee; stanzas 2 and 3 are ababccdd. Every stanza ends with two rhyming couplets.

Stanza-by-stanza explanation

Theme

• The power of beauty and music: a simple song from a working girl moves the poet more than the famous songs of birds.
• Lasting memory: true beauty stays in the heart ("The music in my heart I bore") and gives joy long afterwards.
• Nature and simple rural life: the Romantic love of ordinary country people working in natural surroundings.
• Mystery and imagination: because he cannot understand the language, the poet's imagination travels from Arabia to the Hebrides and from old battles to everyday sorrow.
• Loneliness: the words single, solitary, by herself and alone all stress that she is alone.

Devices

Five likely questions with answers

The Sea (James Reeves)Often examined

Poet and background

James Reeves (1909 to 1978) was an English poet, editor and writer, best known for poems for young readers. "The Sea" appeared in his collection The Wandering Moon (1950). The poem is still under copyright, so these notes quote only the stanza printed in the 2026 FBISE paper and explain the rest in our own words.

The whole poem is built on one extended metaphor: the sea is a huge, hungry, grey dog. Each stanza shows the sea in a different mood, just as a dog behaves differently when it is hungry, excited or sleepy.

Form and rhyme

Three stanzas of unequal length, with short and long lines and a strong, lively rhythm. The rhyme is irregular: words rhyme in pairs and groups, but there is no fixed pattern for the whole poem. The stanza set in 2026 has the scheme abccb. Heavy use of sound words (onomatopoeia) and alliteration makes the poem good to read aloud.

Stanza-by-stanza explanation

And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy cloud,
He bounds to his feet and snuffs and stiffs,
Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs,
And howls and hollos long and loud.

Theme

• The changing moods of nature: the sea can be restless, violent or calm depending on the weather and the season.
• The power of nature: like a big dog, the sea can be frightening and dangerous, but also gentle.
• Nature as a living being: the poet makes the sea feel alive, so that the reader understands it through a familiar animal.

Devices

Five likely questions with answers

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward FitzGerald)Often examined

Poet, translator and background

Omar Khayyam (1048 to 1131) was a Persian scholar from Nishapur in Khorasan (north-east Iran). He was a great mathematician (he solved cubic equations geometrically), an astronomer who helped make the accurate Jalali calendar (1079), a philosopher and a poet. His short four-line poems are called rubaiyat (singular rubai).

Edward FitzGerald (1809 to 1883), an English writer, published his free English version in 1859. He did not translate word for word: he chose, joined and rearranged quatrains to make one poem that moves from dawn to night. It became one of the most popular poems in English. The National Curriculum lists it under the sub-theme Spiritualism (Rubaiyat).

Rubai

a Persian quatrain (four lines) with the rhyme scheme aaba; each rubai is complete in itself

Turret

a small tower on a palace or castle

Noose

a loop of rope that tightens when pulled, used to catch animals (a lasso)

Anon

soon, in a moment

Caravanserai

an inn on a desert trade route where caravans stop for the night

Sultan

a Muslim king or ruler

Worldly Hope

hope for wealth, power, fame and pleasure in this world

Form and rhyme scheme

Every stanza is a rubai: four lines of iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme aaba. Lines 1, 2 and 4 rhyme; line 3 is left unrhymed, which creates a small pause before the strong rhyming last line.

Main themes

• The shortness of life and the passing of time: life is brief, and every moment should be used well.
• The emptiness of worldly things: wealth, power and fame do not last; even great kings pass away.
• Fate: what is written cannot be changed.
• Spiritual reflection: thinking about death and the limits of human knowledge leads us to look beyond this world. Many Eastern readers take the images of wine and the cup as Sufi symbols of divine love and spiritual joy.

The quatrains explained

The NBF textbook prints a selection of quatrains. The two set by FBISE (model paper and 2026 Set D) are printed and explained first; the other well-known quatrains are explained in our own words so you can recognise them.

Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Explanation: The poet calls the sleeper to wake up. Morning is shown as a person who throws a stone into the "bowl" of the night sky. In the desert, a stone thrown into a bowl was a signal for a caravan to leave; here it makes the stars "fly" away (disappear). Then the rising sun, "the Hunter of the East", throws a lasso of light and catches the tower of the Sultan's palace, that is, the first sunlight touches the highest tower. Message: a new day has come, so wake up and use it, because time moves on.

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two – is gone.

Explanation: The hopes of this world that people love so much either fail completely ("turn ashes", burn to nothing) or succeed for a while. Even when they succeed, they soon disappear, like snow falling on the hot, dusty desert, which shines for an hour or two and then melts. Message: worldly success is brief and should not be the centre of our hearts.

Devices

Five likely questions with answers

Harvest Hymn (John Betjeman)

Poet and background

Sir John Betjeman (1906 to 1984) was an English poet and broadcaster and Poet Laureate from 1972. He loved old churches, villages and the countryside, and often wrote with gentle humour and sharp irony about modern greed and ugly development.

"Harvest Hymn" (from his 1970s collection A Nip in the Air) is a parody of a famous church harvest hymn, "We plough the fields and scatter", in which farmers humbly thank God for the harvest. Betjeman keeps the same tune and pattern but changes the words: his modern farmers boast of spraying poison, destroying hedges and trees, and making money, and in the chorus they give thanks only for their own hard work. The poem is a satire on greedy, industrial farming and damage to the environment.

Form and rhyme scheme

Written in hymn metre: stanzas of alternating longer and shorter lines, like the original hymn, each followed by a short chorus (refrain) that copies the hymn's chorus. The rhyme scheme is abcb (only the second and fourth lines of each group of four rhyme), the usual hymn and ballad pattern.

Explanation, part by part (in our own words)

Theme

• Greed and materialism in modern agriculture.
• Destruction of nature: pesticides, burning fields and cutting hedges and trees.
• Loss of gratitude and faith: the original hymn thanks God; the parody thanks money and machines.
• Loss of tradition: old cottages, oaks and the countryside of their fathers are destroyed.

Devices

Five likely questions with answers

London (William Blake)Often examined

Poet and background

William Blake (1757 to 1827) was an English poet, painter and engraver, now seen as an early Romantic. He printed his own illustrated books. Songs of Innocence (1789) shows the world through the eyes of a happy child; Songs of Experience (1794) shows the same world darkened by poverty, cruelty and injustice. "London" is in Songs of Experience.

Blake wrote at the time of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. London was rich and powerful, but many of its people were poor. Small boys worked as chimney sweeps, soldiers were sent to die in wars, young women were forced by poverty into shameful lives, and the Church and the King seemed to ignore their suffering. The poem is Blake's protest.

Chartered

controlled by a charter: owned, mapped and ruled by law and trade, not free

Woe

great sorrow

Ban

a law, order or curse that forbids something

Mind-forg'd manacles

chains or handcuffs made (forged) by the mind: fear, blind obedience, false ideas that keep people from being free

Appals

shocks, horrifies (Blake also plays on "pall", the dark cloth over a coffin)

Hapless

unlucky, unfortunate

Blights

damages, ruins as a disease ruins a crop

Form and rhyme scheme

Four quatrains in iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme abab in every stanza. The regular, steady beat sounds like the poet's footsteps as he walks, and like the dull sameness of the misery he sees.

Stanza-by-stanza explanation

In every cry of every Man,
In Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

Theme

• Suffering and injustice in a great, rich city.
• Loss of freedom: people are chained by laws, trade and their own minds.
• Criticism of those in power: the Church, the monarchy and the rich are blamed for the misery of the poor.
• Innocence destroyed: children, infants and young people suffer most.

Devices

Five likely questions with answers

Old syllabus: All the World's a Stage (Shakespeare)

The old-syllabus (Curriculum 2006) paper of 2026 set this famous speech from William Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It (about 1599, Act II, Scene 7). The speaker is Jaques, a gloomy, thoughtful lord. The speech is in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), so there is no rhyme scheme; questions ask for the message, explanation of a line and word meanings.

Central metaphor: the world is a stage, people are actors, birth and death are their entrances and exits, and each life is a play in seven acts (ages).

Key terms

Extract

A short passage (4 to 8 lines) taken from a longer poem.

Speaker

The voice that talks in a poem; not always the poet.

Tone

The poet's attitude to the subject (admiring, bitter, ironic).

Mood

The feeling the poem creates in the reader (calm, gloomy, tense).

Theme

The general idea about life behind the subject of a poem, stated as a full sentence.

Central idea

The main point of a poem or extract in one or two sentences.

Message

The lesson or truth the poet wants the reader to take away.

Rhyme

The same ending sound in two words, from the last stressed vowel onwards (hill / still).

Rhyme scheme

The pattern of end rhymes in a stanza, labelled with small letters (abab).

Couplet

Two lines, usually rhyming (aa); also a stanza of two lines.

Tercet

A stanza of three lines.

Quatrain

A stanza of four lines.

Quintain

A stanza of five lines.

Sestet

A stanza or group of six lines; the last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.

Octave

A stanza or group of eight lines; the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.

Slant rhyme

A near rhyme where the sounds are close but not identical (eye / symmetry); also called half rhyme.

Eye rhyme

Words that look as if they rhyme but sound different (love / move).

Internal rhyme

A rhyme inside a line rather than at its end.

Feminine rhyme

A two-syllable rhyme ending on an unstressed syllable (ending / bending).

Metre

The regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

Foot

One unit of metre, such as an iamb (weak, strong).

Iamb

A foot of one unstressed and one stressed syllable (a-WAKE).

Trochee

A foot of one stressed and one unstressed syllable (SING-ing).

Anapest

A foot of two unstressed syllables and one stressed syllable.

Dactyl

A foot of one stressed syllable and two unstressed syllables (BEAU-ti-ful).

Iambic pentameter

A line of five iambs (ten syllables).

Iambic tetrameter

A line of four iambs (eight syllables), used in The Solitary Reaper and London.

Blank verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter, as in Shakespeare's plays.

Free verse

Poetry without regular metre or rhyme.

Enjambment

A sentence running on from one line to the next without a pause.

Caesura

A pause in the middle of a line.

Refrain

A line or lines repeated at intervals, like a chorus.

Lyric

A short poem expressing the personal feelings of one speaker.

Sonnet

A 14-line poem in iambic pentameter with a fixed rhyme scheme (Petrarchan or Shakespearean).

Ode

A long, serious lyric that praises or addresses a person, thing or idea.

Ballad

A song-like narrative poem in simple quatrains, often rhyming abcb.

Elegy

A poem of mourning for the dead or reflecting on death.

Narrative poem

A poem that tells a story.

Epic

A very long narrative poem about heroes and great events.

Rubai

A Persian quatrain rhyming aaba, complete in itself (plural rubaiyat).

Hymn

A religious song of praise.

Parody

A work that copies the style of another in order to mock something.

Satire

Writing that uses humour, irony or exaggeration to criticise people or society.

Apostrophe

Addressing an absent person, a thing or an idea directly (My heart be brave).

Extended metaphor

A metaphor carried through several lines or a whole poem (the sea as a dog).

Imagery

Language that appeals to the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, kinetic.

Paraphrase

Rewriting lines of poetry in plain modern prose, keeping all the meaning and adding nothing.

Romantic poetry

Poetry of about 1790 to 1830 (Wordsworth, Blake) that values feeling, imagination, nature and common people.

FBISE paper questions

Questions from the FBISE HSSC-II 2026 (1st Annual) papers, the old-syllabus paper and FBISE model papers that belong to this unit, answered the way an examiner expects.

My heart be brave, and do not falter so,
Nor more that deep, utter despairing wail
Thy way is very dark and drear I know,
But do not let thy strength and courage fail;

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two – is gone.

And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy cloud,
He bounds to his feet and snuffs and stiffs,
Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs,
And howls and hollos long and loud.

In every cry of every Man,
In Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;

And O'er the sickle bending;–
I saw her singing at her work,
I listened, motionless, and still;
And as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

All the World's a stage,
And all the men women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

"Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light."

"Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!"

Exam focus

1. Paraphrase the last (or first) two lines of an extract. (short)
   Asked in all eight new-syllabus extracts of 2025 to 2026; most students lose marks here.
   Go to answer
2. Identify the rhyme scheme of the extract (show the rhyming words). (short)
   The easiest 2 marks; asked in five of the ten extracts. Watch for abcb and aaba.
   Go to answer
3. Identify any poetic device and explain it (name, show, effect). (short)
   Asked in Set B, Set D and the model paper.
   Go to answer
4. Explain the use of imagery in the extract. (short)
   Asked in the model paper (both extracts) and 2026 Set D.
   Go to answer
5. What message / central idea / feelings does the extract convey? (short)
   Asked in 2026 Sets A and B and the old syllabus paper; 2 to 3 sentences with a quotation.
   Go to answer
6. The Solitary Reaper: rhyme scheme, bird comparisons, the lasting song. (short)
   Four extracts in two years came from this poem.
   Go to answer
7. Rubaiyat: imagery of dawn, the Hunter of the East, worldly hope like desert snow. (short)
   Set in the model paper and 2026 Set D; always aaba.
   Go to answer
8. London: mind-forg'd manacles, repetition of every, abab. (short)
   New in 2026 Set A and likely to return.
   Go to answer
9. The Sea: the extended metaphor of the dog, imagery and abccb. (short)
   Set in 2026 Set D; other stanzas are likely next.
   Go to answer