“The Last Quarter of the Moon” by Amy Lowell
How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.
Like dogs unleashed
After a beast,
They stream on the sky, an outflung string.
A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark,
Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests,
And the fierce unrests
I keep as guests
Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark.
Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt
My labouring mind, I have fought and failed.
I have not quailed,
I was all unmailed
And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt.
The moon drops into the silver day
As waking out of her swoon she comes.
I hear the drums
Of millenniums
Beating the mornings I still must stay.
The years I must watch go in and out,
While I build with water, and dig in air,
And the trumpets blare
Hollow despair,
The shuddering trumpets of utter rout.
An atom tossed in a chaos made
Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam.
Whence have I come?
What would be home?
I hear no answer. I am afraid!
I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame.
Pushed into nothingness by a breath,
And quench in a wreath
Of engulfing death
This fight for a God, or this devil's game.
Use the poem to answer the question.
The parallel structure of the syntax in lines 16 and 20 (“A desolate wind . . . pallid and stark”) serves which purpose?
A.
They unify the concepts of isolation and alienation.
B.
They convey the depth of the speaker’s loneliness and despair.
C.
They suggest that the speaker desires to be surrounded by people.
D.
They draw a correlation between grief and self-imposed exile.
E.
They contrast “unpeopled” with the “crowd” of specters.
E. They contrast "unpeopled" with the "crowd" of specters.
In this case, the parallel structure in lines 16 and 20 contrasts the speaker's desolate and isolating surroundings with the presence of the crowded and haunting specters in their mind.
The parallel structure of the syntax in lines 16 and 20 ("A desolate wind...pallid and stark") suggests that the speaker desires to be surrounded by people. (C)
To determine the purpose of the parallel structure in lines 16 and 20, we need to analyze the lines themselves. In line 16, the speaker describes a "desolate wind" shaking bushes and whistling through empty nests, while in line 20, the same wind is linked to the "corpses, pallid and stark" that crowd the speaker's brain. This parallel structure emphasizes the bleak and isolated imagery presented in both lines.
Given this analysis, we can eliminate options C and E, as they do not align with the themes depicted in the lines. Option D, drawing a correlation between grief and self-imposed exile, is also not directly supported by the lines.
Option A, unifying the concepts of isolation and alienation, could be a possible interpretation, as the parallel structure reinforces the theme of isolation by highlighting both the desolation of the external environment and the internal state of the speaker.
However, the most appropriate answer would be option B, conveying the depth of the speaker's loneliness and despair. The parallel structure enhances the emotional impact of the lines by emphasizing the intensity of the speaker's feelings of loneliness and despair, indicated by the imagery of the wind and the specters.