Past questions
SAMPLE: A sense of place in London
2017: The natural world in Lines Written in Early Spring
2018: Death in ‘The cold earth slept below’ OR childhood in Ode: Intimations on Immortality
2019: Human nature in Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday OR personal reflection in Sonnet on the Sea
? The power of nature in Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey OR the individual in Stanzas Written in
Dejection, near Naples
2021: Ways in which poets use imagery in The Sick Rose OR attitudes to life in Lines Inscribed upon a Cup Formed from
a Skull
2022: Suffering in London OR the poet’s vision in Ode to the West Wind
2023: (Power of creativity?) in Ode on a Grecian Urn OR innocence in Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday
Themes
Mortality / the human experience
● Ode to a Nightingale: mortality is presented as an unrelenting burden on the poet, and the poem showcases his
several attempts to escape it.
○ Intoxication
○ Poetic imagination
○ The natural world
● Ode on a Grecian Urn: Keats rejects mortality for the immortality of art.
○ Love - tantalising, liminal moments are eternalised = forever bliss. Fanny Brawne.
○ Nature and purity
○ Poetry - by writing this ode Keats is immortalising a snapshot of his human experience for future
generations.
● Ode on Melancholy: Keats presents an acceptance of mortality and the necessary coexistence of positive and
negative emotions for the human experience.
● On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year: Byron’s sudden awareness of mortality when ageing prompts his
search for a higher purpose.
○ A burden that exacerbates loneliness and suffering
○ A prison
○ A motivating factor
● Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull
● ‘The cold earth slept below’
● Ode: Intimations on Immortality
Nature
● Lines Written in Early Spring
● Tintern Abbey
● ‘The cold earth slept below’
● Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples
● Ode to the West Wind
SAMPLE: A sense of place in London
2017: The natural world in Lines Written in Early Spring
2018: Death in ‘The cold earth slept below’ OR childhood in Ode: Intimations on Immortality
2019: Human nature in Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday OR personal reflection in Sonnet on the Sea
? The power of nature in Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey OR the individual in Stanzas Written in
Dejection, near Naples
2021: Ways in which poets use imagery in The Sick Rose OR attitudes to life in Lines Inscribed upon a Cup Formed from
a Skull
2022: Suffering in London OR the poet’s vision in Ode to the West Wind
2023: (Power of creativity?) in Ode on a Grecian Urn OR innocence in Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday
Themes
Mortality / the human experience
● Ode to a Nightingale: mortality is presented as an unrelenting burden on the poet, and the poem showcases his
several attempts to escape it.
○ Intoxication
○ Poetic imagination
○ The natural world
● Ode on a Grecian Urn: Keats rejects mortality for the immortality of art.
○ Love - tantalising, liminal moments are eternalised = forever bliss. Fanny Brawne.
○ Nature and purity
○ Poetry - by writing this ode Keats is immortalising a snapshot of his human experience for future
generations.
● Ode on Melancholy: Keats presents an acceptance of mortality and the necessary coexistence of positive and
negative emotions for the human experience.
● On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year: Byron’s sudden awareness of mortality when ageing prompts his
search for a higher purpose.
○ A burden that exacerbates loneliness and suffering
○ A prison
○ A motivating factor
● Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull
● ‘The cold earth slept below’
● Ode: Intimations on Immortality
Nature
● Lines Written in Early Spring
● Tintern Abbey
● ‘The cold earth slept below’
● Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples
● Ode to the West Wind
