AP Lit Final POEMS

Flashcards for Ms. Oversons 2025 Fall Final, these cover the poems we read in class, including the author and a summary of the piece.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

• Christopher Marlowe, Pastoral

• Speaker: Shepherd

• Audience: His love

• Purpose: Convincing her to live with him

• Tone: adoring, romantic, inducing

• Sets an unrealistic standard for the life of a shepherds wife

The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd

• Sir Walter Raleigh, Pastoral

• Speaker: Nymph

• Audience: The shepherd

• Purpose: tell him his love lacks substance & he couldn’t really keep her safe

• Tone: realistic, pessimistic

• Response to “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”

To His Son

• Sir Walter Raleigh, Petrarchan Sonnet

• Speaker: Sir Walter

• Audience: His son

• Purpose: to warn his son against being reckless and getting hung

• Tone: warning

• Wood (gallows) Weed (rope for noose) Wag (mischievous young boy)

Sonnet 31

• Phillip Sidney — Astrophel and Stella

• Petrarchan

• Apostrophe to the moon, talking about Stella

• Thinks the moon is also in unrequited love

• Astrophel has been denied & is bitter about it

• Asking the moon if women are ungrateful up in the sky as they are on Earth

• Wants either: Stella to read & feel guilty or a Man to read and relate

Sonnet 39

• Phillip Sidney — Astrophel & Stella

• Petrarchan

• Apostrophe to sleep, begging it to ease his pain, give him a nice place to rest, & let him see Stella in his dreams

• Sleep is protection from everything for everyone

Sonnet 1

• Edmund Spenser, Spenserian

• About devotion to a woman, and jealousy of the poem he’s writing because it gets to be held by her and looked at by her

• Only wants to please HER

• Audience: the poem

• Speaker: unknown

Sonnet 26

• Edmund Spenser, Spenserian

• Repetition of “Sweet is the…but…”

• More painful to acquire = greater pleasure once you have it

Sonnet 75

• Edmund Spenser, Spenserian

• Man writes her name in the sand, the waves wash it off, she says he’s vain to try to immortalize a mortal thing & that she’ll die eventually. He says he’ll immortalize her in his poetry.

• More of a story than just an idea!

Sonnet 29

• Shakespeare(an)

• 1st quatrain: bad luck & reputation, complaining

• 2nd quatrain: depressed, wishing for better things

• 3rd quatrain: remembers his lover, happy again

• Couplet: nothing is more valuable than love

Sonnet 73

• Shakespeare(an)

• “I’m going to die soon”, compares to winter, past sunset, an extinguished fire

• She’ll love him more knowing she’ll lose him soon

Sonnet 116

• Shakespeare(an)

• He believes love will never be changed & it shouldn’t be restrained

• If you truly love someone, that won’t ever change, and you won’t want to change them

• If he’s wrong, no one has ever really loved

Sonnet 130

• Shakespeare(an)

• My lover is normal, but I love her the most

• Tone: ironic

• Reverses the cliché of an exceptional, perfect woman

Psalm 23

• King James Version

• Included many well-known phrases

  • ex: I will fear no evil, for thou art with me

Parable of the Prodigal Son

• King James Version

• We’re all like the son, and God is like the father

  • we were lost but now we’re found, dead but now we’re alive

• Older son is upset/jealous now, but at the end everything will be his