Fact Based Questions Test-2

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

HE DRAINED HIS THIRD cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole, and the pool under it brought back to his memory the dark turfcoloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The bog of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.

1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man’s Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box, speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely:
- How much is the clock fast now?
His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side.
- An hour and twenty five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear jr knows you might try to be in time for your lectures.
- Fill out the place for me to wash, said Stephen.
- Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- Booty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- I can’t, I’m going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggie.
When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink and the old washing glove flung on the side of it, he allowed his mother to scrub his neck and root into the folds of his ears and into the interstices at the wings of his nose.
- Well, it’s a poor case, she said, when a university student is so dirty that his mother has to wash him.
- But it gives you pleasure, said Stephen calmly.
An ear splitting whistle was heard from upstairs and his mother thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying:
- Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.
A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls to the foot of the staircase.
- Yes, father?
- Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
- Yes, father.
- Sure?
- Hm!
The girl came back, making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back. Stephen laughed and said:
- He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine.
- Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

HE DRAINED HIS THIRD cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole, and the pool under it brought back to his memory the dark turfcoloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The bog of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.

1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man’s Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box, speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely:
- How much is the clock fast now?
His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side.
- An hour and twenty five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear jr knows you might try to be in time for your lectures.
- Fill out the place for me to wash, said Stephen.
- Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- Booty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- I can’t, I’m going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggie.
When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink and the old washing glove flung on the side of it, he allowed his mother to scrub his neck and root into the folds of his ears and into the interstices at the wings of his nose.
- Well, it’s a poor case, she said, when a university student is so dirty that his mother has to wash him.
- But it gives you pleasure, said Stephen calmly.
An ear splitting whistle was heard from upstairs and his mother thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying:
- Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.
A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls to the foot of the staircase.
- Yes, father?
- Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
- Yes, father.
- Sure?
- Hm!
The girl came back, making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back. Stephen laughed and said:
- He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine.
- Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

HE DRAINED HIS THIRD cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole, and the pool under it brought back to his memory the dark turfcoloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The bog of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.

1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man’s Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box, speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely:
- How much is the clock fast now?
His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side.
- An hour and twenty five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear jr knows you might try to be in time for your lectures.
- Fill out the place for me to wash, said Stephen.
- Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- Booty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- I can’t, I’m going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggie.
When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink and the old washing glove flung on the side of it, he allowed his mother to scrub his neck and root into the folds of his ears and into the interstices at the wings of his nose.
- Well, it’s a poor case, she said, when a university student is so dirty that his mother has to wash him.
- But it gives you pleasure, said Stephen calmly.
An ear splitting whistle was heard from upstairs and his mother thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying:
- Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.
A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls to the foot of the staircase.
- Yes, father?
- Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
- Yes, father.
- Sure?
- Hm!
The girl came back, making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back. Stephen laughed and said:
- He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine.
- Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

HE DRAINED HIS THIRD cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole, and the pool under it brought back to his memory the dark turfcoloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The bog of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.

1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man’s Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box, speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely:
- How much is the clock fast now?
His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side.
- An hour and twenty five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear jr knows you might try to be in time for your lectures.
- Fill out the place for me to wash, said Stephen.
- Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- Booty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- I can’t, I’m going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggie.
When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink and the old washing glove flung on the side of it, he allowed his mother to scrub his neck and root into the folds of his ears and into the interstices at the wings of his nose.
- Well, it’s a poor case, she said, when a university student is so dirty that his mother has to wash him.
- But it gives you pleasure, said Stephen calmly.
An ear splitting whistle was heard from upstairs and his mother thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying:
- Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.
A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls to the foot of the staircase.
- Yes, father?
- Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
- Yes, father.
- Sure?
- Hm!
The girl came back, making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back. Stephen laughed and said:
- He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine.
- Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

HE DRAINED HIS THIRD cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole, and the pool under it brought back to his memory the dark turfcoloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The bog of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.

1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man’s Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box, speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely:
- How much is the clock fast now?
His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side.
- An hour and twenty five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear jr knows you might try to be in time for your lectures.
- Fill out the place for me to wash, said Stephen.
- Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- Booty, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
- I can’t, I’m going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggie.
When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink and the old washing glove flung on the side of it, he allowed his mother to scrub his neck and root into the folds of his ears and into the interstices at the wings of his nose.
- Well, it’s a poor case, she said, when a university student is so dirty that his mother has to wash him.
- But it gives you pleasure, said Stephen calmly.
An ear splitting whistle was heard from upstairs and his mother thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying:
- Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.
A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls to the foot of the staircase.
- Yes, father?
- Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?
- Yes, father.
- Sure?
- Hm!
The girl came back, making signs to him to be quick and go out quietly by the back. Stephen laughed and said:
- He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine.
- Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Towards dawn he awoke. 0 what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music.

But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. An enchantment of the heart! The night had been enchanted.

In a dream or vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life. Was it an instant of enchantment only or long hours and years and ages? The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened or of what might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow.

O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph nr had come to the virgin’s chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man had known or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world: and lured by that ardent roselike glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven. Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days.

The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle ns pass through them. The roselike glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels : the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart. Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat. And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world. Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim Tell no more of enchanted days.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Towards dawn he awoke. 0 what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music.

But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. An enchantment of the heart! The night had been enchanted.

In a dream or vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life. Was it an instant of enchantment only or long hours and years and ages? The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened or of what might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow.

O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph nr had come to the virgin’s chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man had known or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world: and lured by that ardent roselike glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven. Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days.

The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle ns pass through them. The roselike glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels : the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart. Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat. And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world. Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim Tell no more of enchanted days.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Towards dawn he awoke. 0 what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music.

But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. An enchantment of the heart! The night had been enchanted.

In a dream or vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life. Was it an instant of enchantment only or long hours and years and ages? The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened or of what might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow.

O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph nr had come to the virgin’s chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man had known or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world: and lured by that ardent roselike glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven. Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days.

The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle ns pass through them. The roselike glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels : the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart. Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat. And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world. Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim Tell no more of enchanted days.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Towards dawn he awoke. 0 what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music.

But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. An enchantment of the heart! The night had been enchanted.

In a dream or vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life. Was it an instant of enchantment only or long hours and years and ages? The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened or of what might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow.

O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph nr had come to the virgin’s chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man had known or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world: and lured by that ardent roselike glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven. Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days.

The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle ns pass through them. The roselike glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels : the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart. Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat. And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world. Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim Tell no more of enchanted days.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Towards dawn he awoke. 0 what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music.

But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. An enchantment of the heart! The night had been enchanted.

In a dream or vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life. Was it an instant of enchantment only or long hours and years and ages? The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened or of what might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow.

O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph nr had come to the virgin’s chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man had known or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world: and lured by that ardent roselike glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven. Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days.

The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle ns pass through them. The roselike glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels : the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart. Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat. And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world. Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim Tell no more of enchanted days.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look at them, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the late March evening made clear their flight, their dark darting quivering bodies flying clearly against the sky as against a limp hung cloth of smoky tenuous blue. He watched their flight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, a flutter of wings.

He tried to count them before all their darting quivering bodies passed: Six, ten, eleven: and wondered were they odd or even in number. Twelve, thirteen: for two came wheeling down from the upper sky. They were flying high and low but ever round and round in straight and curving lines and ever flying from left to right, circling about a temple of air. He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note.

But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools. The inhuman clamour soothed his ears in which his mother’s sobs and reproaches murmured insistently and the dark frail quivering bodies wheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy temple of the tenuous sky soothed his eyes which still saw the image of his mother’s face.

Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good or evil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither an thither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason.

And for ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at birds in flight. The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawklike man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osierwoven wings, of Thoth,  the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look at them, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the late March evening made clear their flight, their dark darting quivering bodies flying clearly against the sky as against a limp hung cloth of smoky tenuous blue. He watched their flight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, a flutter of wings.

He tried to count them before all their darting quivering bodies passed: Six, ten, eleven: and wondered were they odd or even in number. Twelve, thirteen: for two came wheeling down from the upper sky. They were flying high and low but ever round and round in straight and curving lines and ever flying from left to right, circling about a temple of air. He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note.

But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools. The inhuman clamour soothed his ears in which his mother’s sobs and reproaches murmured insistently and the dark frail quivering bodies wheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy temple of the tenuous sky soothed his eyes which still saw the image of his mother’s face.

Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good or evil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither an thither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason.

And for ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at birds in flight. The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawklike man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osierwoven wings, of Thoth,  the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look at them, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the late March evening made clear their flight, their dark darting quivering bodies flying clearly against the sky as against a limp hung cloth of smoky tenuous blue. He watched their flight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, a flutter of wings.

He tried to count them before all their darting quivering bodies passed: Six, ten, eleven: and wondered were they odd or even in number. Twelve, thirteen: for two came wheeling down from the upper sky. They were flying high and low but ever round and round in straight and curving lines and ever flying from left to right, circling about a temple of air. He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note.

But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools. The inhuman clamour soothed his ears in which his mother’s sobs and reproaches murmured insistently and the dark frail quivering bodies wheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy temple of the tenuous sky soothed his eyes which still saw the image of his mother’s face.

Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good or evil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither an thither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason.

And for ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at birds in flight. The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawklike man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osierwoven wings, of Thoth,  the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look at them, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the late March evening made clear their flight, their dark darting quivering bodies flying clearly against the sky as against a limp hung cloth of smoky tenuous blue. He watched their flight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, a flutter of wings.

He tried to count them before all their darting quivering bodies passed: Six, ten, eleven: and wondered were they odd or even in number. Twelve, thirteen: for two came wheeling down from the upper sky. They were flying high and low but ever round and round in straight and curving lines and ever flying from left to right, circling about a temple of air. He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note.

But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools. The inhuman clamour soothed his ears in which his mother’s sobs and reproaches murmured insistently and the dark frail quivering bodies wheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy temple of the tenuous sky soothed his eyes which still saw the image of his mother’s face.

Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good or evil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither an thither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason.

And for ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at birds in flight. The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawklike man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osierwoven wings, of Thoth,  the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look at them, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the late March evening made clear their flight, their dark darting quivering bodies flying clearly against the sky as against a limp hung cloth of smoky tenuous blue. He watched their flight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, a flutter of wings.

He tried to count them before all their darting quivering bodies passed: Six, ten, eleven: and wondered were they odd or even in number. Twelve, thirteen: for two came wheeling down from the upper sky. They were flying high and low but ever round and round in straight and curving lines and ever flying from left to right, circling about a temple of air. He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note.

But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools. The inhuman clamour soothed his ears in which his mother’s sobs and reproaches murmured insistently and the dark frail quivering bodies wheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy temple of the tenuous sky soothed his eyes which still saw the image of his mother’s face.

Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good or evil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither an thither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason.

And for ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at birds in flight. The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawklike man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osierwoven wings, of Thoth,  the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.

[Extracts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and DUBLINERS By JAMES JOYCE]