“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.
Reread the second to last stanza. How is the rhyme scheme different in this stanza than in the other stanzas in the poem?
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!
A.
It relies on a half rhyme with the words come and home.
B.
It breaks from the standard pattern of ababa.
C.
It includes one line that rhymes with no other lines in the stanza.
D.
It has an unusual rhyme scheme of aaaaa.
E.
The stanza contains multiple instances of internal rhyme.
B. It breaks from the standard pattern of ababa.
C. It includes one line that rhymes with no other lines in the stanza.
To determine how the rhyme scheme differs in the second to last stanza compared to the other stanzas in the poem, we can analyze the stanza's rhyme pattern.
In the second to last stanza, the rhyme scheme is different from the other stanzas. The four lines in the stanza do not follow the typical pattern seen in the rest of the poem. Instead of having a structured rhyme scheme like ababa or aabb, this stanza breaks from the standard pattern. The last four lines in this stanza, "Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam," "Whence have I come?" "What would be home?" and "I hear no answer. I am afraid!" do not rhyme with any other lines in the stanza.
Therefore, the correct answer is:
C. It includes one line that rhymes with no other lines in the stanza.