The following questions need to be answered in the reading response. please. THERE IS AN EXAMPLE I PROVIDED A PDF VERSION OF

1. Ask ONE critical question about the text or set of texts you’ve chosen and provide a brief answe to it (e.g. What is the significance of the caged bird in Glaspell’s play?) You will, of course, need to refer to the text(s) specifically to support your points. Include your critical question and your response. [200-300 words]
2. Choose one short passage or set of lines (up to 4) which you find particularly meaningful, interesting, or challenging and explicate it (do NOT paraphrase; instead, explain the significance of the passage, word-by word). This part of the assignment will assess your close-reading skills. This task is the same task I had you complete in RA #1: Close Reading. Remember to put quotation marks around individual words that you refer to from your passage (e.g. “Faces” in Poe’s poem refers to…) [200-300 words]
3. Briefly compare your chosen text to something else we read this semester (e.g. “This text reminds me of ______ for these reasons…”) Please choose a different author for #3 and #4. [50-100 words]
4. Briefly imagine how any other writer (preferably one on the syllabus) would respond to the text you’ve chosen (e.g. “I think Blake would think that this work is ______ because…”) Please choose a different author for #3 and #4. [50-100 words]

500-800 words total

POEM:

Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

(1819)