These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages are public-domain poems (author, title and date given, spelling modernised where stated) or an original poem written by Marlbridge, labelled as such. Mark points are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not an official scoring guideline. Questions 1 to 6 are multiple choice; Questions 7 and 8 are written responses. Allow about 45 minutes. No calculator is needed.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
In John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (1633), the speaker compares the lovers’ souls to “stiff twin compasses”. Which description is most accurate?
- (A) A paradox in which the compasses stand for two opposed ideas.
- (B) A single simile that appears once and is not developed.
- (C) An allusion to a Greek myth about geometry.
- (D) An extended metaphor, developed over several lines through the fixed and moving feet, that works as a conceit.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The comparison is developed over three stanzas (the fixed foot, the roaming foot, the circle), and it joins two very unlike things, love and a drawing instrument, in an ingenious argument.
- (A) misdescribes the figure: the compass is a vehicle for a single comparison, not two opposed ideas.
- (B) is wrong because the comparison is not a passing simile; it is developed element by element.
- (C) has no basis in the lines.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
In the same poem, the fixed foot “leans and hearkens after” the other foot, and “grows erect, as that comes home”. What does this element of the conceit suggest about the partner?
- (A) That she wishes to travel with him.
- (B) That she is passive and has no feelings.
- (C) That her steadiness is a form of attention: she responds to his movement and is most fully herself when he returns.
- (D) That she resents his departure.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). “Leans and hearkens” gives the fixed foot attentive, responsive posture; “grows erect” suggests renewed readiness at his return. Her stillness is a kind of activity.
- (A) is not suggested; the fixed foot stays at the centre by design.
- (B) contradicts the verbs of attention.
- (D) has no evidence in the lines; the tone is loving and trusting.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
“Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I begun.” Which explanation best shows how elements of the conceit work together?
- (A) The compass is an instrument that can draw circles.
- (B) The circle is only perfect if the moving foot goes out and returns while the fixed foot stays firm, so the partner’s constancy and the speaker’s journey together make the figure complete.
- (C) The moving foot is the speaker and the fixed foot is his partner.
- (D) The circle is a shape, and shapes are often used in poems.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). It combines two elements (the moving foot’s journey and the fixed foot’s firmness) and says what they achieve together: a “just” circle, so separation contributes to perfection.
- (A) restates a fact about compasses without connecting it to the argument.
- (C) only matches the elements (step one) and does not explain the combination.
- (D) is generic and says nothing about this poem.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
Read this poem, “Grief, a Tenant”, written by Marlbridge.
Grief took the upstairs room without a word,
paid in advance, and asked for no one’s key.
It hung its coat behind my kitchen door
and learned the sound of every stair but three.Some mornings it is gone. The bed is made.
I set a second cup out, and I wait.
By evening there are footsteps overhead,
and I am almost grateful for the weight.
The details “paid in advance” and “asked for no one’s key” most plausibly suggest that grief
- (A) has arrived with a settled right to stay and does not need permission.
- (B) is something the speaker has invited as a guest.
- (C) is a stranger who will leave soon.
- (D) is a danger that the speaker should lock out.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). Paying in advance and not asking for a key are the acts of a tenant who has secured the right to stay, and who does not need to be let in. The metaphor makes grief a resident with a claim.
- (B) overreads: nothing says the speaker invited grief, and “without a word” implies it came uninvited.
- (C) is contradicted by “paid in advance”, which suggests a long stay, and by the later footsteps.
- (D) is not what the speaker does: the speaker sets out a cup and waits.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
In “Grief, a Tenant”, the speaker sets “a second cup out” and says “I am almost grateful for the weight”. How do these elements combine with the tenant metaphor to shape the poem’s meaning?
- (A) They show that the speaker is angry with the tenant.
- (B) They show the speaker is happy and has overcome grief.
- (C) They show that the speaker believes grief is a real person.
- (D) They suggest that living with grief has become a routine of hospitality, in which the speaker finds a strange comfort in its presence.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). Setting out a cup is a host’s habit, and “almost grateful” admits a mixed feeling: the weight overhead is also company. Together with the tenant image, these details suggest an accommodation rather than a cure.
- (A) is contradicted by the host-like gestures.
- (B) overstates: “almost” and “weight” keep the pain.
- (C) takes the metaphor literally.
Question 6 (multiple choice · stretch)
In John Donne’s “The Flea” (1633), the speaker says “This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed and marriage temple is”. What is the most likely effect of this comparison?
- (A) It shows that the speaker believes fleas are sacred.
- (B) It shows that the lover has agreed to marry him.
- (C) It inflates a trivial insect to the status of a sacred space, which makes the argument witty and exposes the speaker’s cleverness and manipulation.
- (D) It is a plain description of a real marriage.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The absurd scale of “marriage temple” for a flea is the strain of the conceit; it makes the argument entertaining while showing that the speaker’s logic is a performance.
- (A) takes a rhetorical claim as a belief.
- (B) is not supported; the lover is refusing and later kills the flea.
- (D) misreads the poem: the speaker is trying to persuade, not describing a marriage.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining how Donne’s compass conceit in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (quoted in the study guide) develops the speaker’s argument about separation. Unpack at least two elements and explain how they combine.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). Donne uses the compass conceit to argue that separation does not damage the lovers’ bond but completes it. The fixed foot, whose soul “makes no show / To move, but doth, if th’ other do”, turns the partner’s stillness into a kind of answering movement, and the roaming foot gives the speaker’s journey a path: “obliquely run”. Taken together, these elements make a circle, and the speaker claims that “Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I begun”. The perfection of the figure depends on both the travel and the steadiness, so the conceit turns a parting into a stage in a shape that cannot be drawn without it. The precise, geometric vehicle also suggests that love, which looks emotional, is as exact and reliable as mathematics.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible claim about what the conceit does for the speaker’s argument. |
| 2 | Unpacks at least two elements with accurate quotation. |
| 3 | Explains how the elements combine (the circle needs both journey and constancy). |
| 4 | Links the conceit to the poem’s overall meaning (separation as expansion or completion). |
Question 8 (written response · stretch)
Write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining how “Grief, a Tenant” (Question 4) uses its extended metaphor to present the speaker’s experience of grief. Unpack at least two elements of the metaphor and explain how they work together.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). The poem presents grief as a long-term resident whose presence the speaker has learned to live with. The tenant arrives “without a word”, “paid in advance”, with no need for a “key”, so grief is shown as something that has an established right and cannot be refused. The domestic details that follow, the coat on the door and its knowing every stair “but three”, make it familiar and almost permanent. These elements combine with the speaker’s hospitality, “a second cup”, to show a relationship forming: the speaker no longer resists but waits and accepts the “weight”. The final admission that the speaker is “almost grateful” reveals the complexity: the metaphor turns grief into company, so the poem’s meaning is not recovery but a settled, ambivalent coexistence.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible claim about the speaker’s experience (for example, coexistence, not recovery). |
| 2 | Unpacks at least two elements with accurate quotation. |
| 3 | Explains how elements combine (arrival, familiarity and hospitality shape one picture). |
| 4 | Links the metaphor to the overall meaning of the poem. |
How did you do?
- Questions 1 to 6 correct: go to the 8.5 study guide.
- Missed 1 or 6: reread the sections on conceits and on strain and surprise in the study guide.
- Missed 2, 3 or 5: practise the two-step skill: unpack each element, then explain how they combine.
- Written responses below 3 points: list the elements first, then write one sentence on what they add up to.