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O-LevelLiterature in EnglishPoetryMay/June 2023Paper 1 Q125 Marks

SECTION A: POETRY Answer one question from this section. SONGS OF OURSELVES VOLUME 1: from Part 4 Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Either 1 Read this poem, and then answer the question that follows it: Rain Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. 5 Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying to-night or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, 10 Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain 15 Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be for what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. (Edward Thomas)

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About This O-Level Literature in English Question

This structured question appeared in the Cambridge O-Level Literature in English (2010) May/June 2023 examination, Paper 1 Variant 2. It tests the topic of Poetry and is worth 25 marks.

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