Reading Compreh...

"On His Deceased Wife"
Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestic from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom wash' t from spot of childbed taint,
Purification in the old law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O, as to embrace me she inclined
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows.[/passage-header]     Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due to simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
[passage-footer]Passage adapted from: Politics And The English Language, George Orwell[/passage-footer]

"The Mower to the Glowworms"
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;
Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass's fall;
Ye glowworms, whose officious flame
To wandering owners shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.

             "The Errand"
"On you go now! Run, son, like the devil
And tell your mother to try
To find me a bubble for the spirit level
And a new knot for this tie."
But still he was glad, I know, when I stood my ground,
Putting it up to him
With a smile that trumped his smile and his fool's errand,
Waiting for the next move in the game.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For 31388expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend to much time in studies is sloth; to use them to much for ornament is affectation; to make judgement wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for 96203natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions to much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn* studies, simple men 48692admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]     Could Washington, Madison, and the other framers of the Federal Constitution revisit the earth in this year 1922, it is likely that nothing would bewilder them more than the recent Prohibition Amendment. Railways, steamships, the telephone, automobiles, flying machines, submarines-all these developments, unknown in their day, would fill them with amazement and admiration. They would marvel at the story of the rise and downfall of the German Empire; at the growth and present greatness of the Republic they themselves had founded. None of these  things, however, would seem to them to involve any essential change in the beliefs and purposes of men as they had known them. The Prohibition Amendment, on the contrary, would evidence to their minds the breaking down of a principle of government which they had deemed axiomatic, the abandonment of a purpose which they had supposed immutable.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: Our changing Constitution, C. W. Pierson (1922)[/passage-footer]

"The Mower to the Glowworms"
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;
Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass's fall;
Ye glowworms, whose officious flame
To wandering owners shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]     Could Washington, Madison, and the other framers of the Federal Constitution revisit the earth in this year 1922, it is likely that nothing would bewilder them more than the recent Prohibition Amendment. Railways, steamships, the telephone, automobiles, flying machines, submarines-all these developments, unknown in their day, would fill them with amazement and admiration. They would marvel at the story of the rise and downfall of the German Empire; at the growth and present greatness of the Republic they themselves had founded. None of these  things, however, would seem to them to involve any essential change in the beliefs and purposes of men as they had known them. The Prohibition Amendment, on the contrary, would evidence to their minds the breaking down of a principle of government which they had deemed axiomatic, the abandonment of a purpose which they had supposed immutable.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: Our changing Constitution, C. W. Pierson (1922)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]     I chose to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a fancy in my head which could be best pursued within sight of its walls. And the fancy was: Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the same lie a dreaming? Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those inside it, every night of our lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously with kings and queens, and notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times and places, as these do daily? Said an afflicted man to me, when I visited a hospital like this, 'Sir, I can frequently fly'. I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I- by night. I wonder that the great master, when he called Sleep the death of each day's life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity.
[passage-footer]Passage adapted from: The Uncommercial Traveller, C. Dickens (1860)[/passage-footer]

"The Mower to the Glowworms"
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;
Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass's fall;
Ye glowworms, whose officious flame
To wandering owners shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.