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British Poetry

Notes Lines 7-8

And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
The speaker tells us that the worm’s “love” kills the rose. It’s strange the “love” is killing something
here, since we usually associate love with life. “Dark secret love” could mean three things. It could
mean the worm’s love, as in “My love for you will never die”.
It could also refer to something that the worm loves, as in, “Hello, my love, I’m home”. It might
even refer to the act of making love, or sex.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:
1. Which of the following is not one of Blake’s major prophetic books?
(a) The Four Zoas (b) Songs of Innocence
(c) Milton (d) Jerusalem
2. Which of these poems is probably about sexually transmitted disease?
(a) The Garden of Love (b) The Sick Rose
(c) Little Girl Lost (d) The Chimney Sweep
3. William Blake received formal education in only one subject. Which?
(a) Art (b) Greek
(c) Literature (d) Blacksmithing
4. Which book is subtitled “Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”?
(a) Songs of Innocence and Experience (b) Poetical Sketches
(c) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (d) Jerusalem
5. Whose mother died when he “was very young,” and who was sold before his “tongue/Could
scarcely cry”?
(a) The Little Black Boy (b) The Chimney Sweeper
(c) The Little Boy Lost (d) The School-Boy
6. Did Blake teach his wife to read?
(a) Yes (b) No
7. Who says, “And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,/And be like him, and he will then
love me”?
(a) The Little Black Boy (b) The Little Boy Found
(c) The Little Girl Lost (d) The Chimney Sweeper
8. Blake once pushed a soldier out of his garden and all the way to a nearby inn, where the
soldier was quartered. The soldier then charged Blake with what?
(a) Blasphemy (b) Assault
(c) Sedition (d) Battery
9. Complete this line from “The Tyger”: “Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the
...... make thee?”
(a) Lamb (b) Heart
(c) World (d) Brain

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