2006 FRQ #1
Post date: Dec 04, 2013 4:26:35 PM
(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)
Read the following poem carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the poet uses language to describe the scene and to convey mood and meaning.
Evening Hawk
From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak’s black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
5 Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.
10 The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.
Look! look! he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.
Long now,
15 The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom
Is ancient, too, and immense. The star
Is steady, like Plato,* over the mountain.
If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
20 The earth grind on its axis, or history
Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.
—Robert Penn Warren
*Greek philosopher (427?–347? B.C.)
Copyright © 1998 by Estate of Robert Penn Warren. Reprinted by permission of William Morris Agency, Inc. on behalf of Author.