Love & Relationships (AQA GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

8 hours15 questions
130 marks

Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ 

I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud

About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,

Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see

Except the straggling green which hides the wood.

Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee

Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly

Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should,

Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare,

And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee

Drop heavily down, – burst, shattered, everywhere!

Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee

And breathe within thy shadow a new air,

I do not think of thee – I am too near thee.

                                                                                                 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Compare how poets present ideas about the power of love in ‘Sonnet 29’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’. 

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230 marks

The Farmer's Bride

      Three summers since I chose a maid,

  Too young maybe – but more’s to do

  At harvest-time than bide and woo.

          When us was wed she turned afraid

  Of love and me and all things human;

  Like the shut of a winter’s day

  Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman –

        More like a little frightened fay.

          One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

 

  ‘Out ’mong the sheep, her be,’ they said,

  Should properly have been abed;

  But sure enough she wadn’t there

  Lying awake with her wide brown stare.

          So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down

  We chased her, flying like a hare

  Before our lanterns. To Church-Town

           All in a shiver and a scare

  We caught her, fetched her home at last

           And turned the key upon her, fast.

 

  She does the work about the house

  As well as most, but like a mouse:

           Happy enough to chat and play

           With birds and rabbits and such as they,

           So long as men-folk keep away.

  ‘Not near, not near!’ her eyes beseech

  When one of us comes within reach.

           The women say that beasts in stall

           Look round like children at her call.

           I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.

 

  Shy as a leveret, swift as he,

  Straight and slight as a young larch tree,

  Sweet as the first wild violets, she,

  To her wild self. But what to me?

 

  The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,

           The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,

  One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,

           A magpie’s spotted feathers lie

  On the black earth spread white with rime,

  The berries redden up to Christmas-time.

           What’s Christmas-time without there be

           Some other in the house than we!

 

           She sleeps up in the attic there

           Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair

  Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,

  The soft young down of her, the brown,

    The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!

                                                                                               Charlotte Mew                                  

Compare how poets present strong feelings in romantic relationships in ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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330 marks

Mother, any distance

Mother, any distance greater than a single span

requires a second pair of hands.

You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors,

the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors.

You at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape, recording

length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base, then leaving

up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling

years between us. Anchor. Kite.


I space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb

the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something

has to give;

two floors below your fingertips still pinch

the last one-hundredth of an inch … I reach

towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky

to fall or fly.

                                                                                            Simon Armitage

Compare how poets present growing up in ‘Mother, any distance’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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430 marks

Walking Away 

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –  

A sunny day with leaves just turning, 

The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play 

Your first game of football, then, like a satellite

Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away  

Behind a scatter of boys.  I can see 

You walking away from me towards the school 

With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free 

Into a wilderness, the gait of one 

Who finds no path where the path should be.  


That hesitant figure, eddying away 

Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem, 

Has something I never quite grasp to convey 

About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching 

Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.  


I have had worse partings, but none that so 

Gnaws at my mind still.  Perhaps it is roughly 

Saying what God alone could perfectly show –  

How selfhood begins with a walking away, 

And love is proved in the letting go.    

                                                                                                                       Cecil Day-Lewis

Compare how poets present family relationships in ‘Walking Away’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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530 marks

Singh Song!

I run just one ov my daddy’s shops

from 9 O’clock to 9 O’clock

and he vunt me not to hav a break

but ven nobody in, I do di lock —


cos up di stairs is my newly bride

vee share in chapatti

vee share in di chutney

after vee hav made luv

like vee rowing through Putney —


ven I return vid my pinnie untied

di shoppers always point and cry:

hey Singh, ver yoo bin?

yor lemons are limes

yor bananas are plantain,

dis dirty little floor need a little bit of mop

in di worst Indian shop

on di whole Indian road —


above my head high heel tap di ground

as my vife on di web is playing wid di mouse

ven she netting two cat on her Sikh lover site

she book dem for di meat at di cheese ov her price —


my bride

    she effing at my mum

    in all di colours of Punjabi

    den stumble like a drunk

    making fun at my daddy


my bride

    tiny eyes ov a gun

    and di tummy ov a teddy


my bride

    she hav a red crew cut

    and she wear a Tartan sari

    a donkey jacket and some pumps

    on di squeak ov di girls dat are pinching all my sweeties —


ven I return from di tickle ov my bride

di shoppers always point and cry:

hey Singh, ver yoo bin?

di milk is out ov date

and di bread is alvays stale,

the tings yoo hav on offer yoo hav never got in stock

in di worst Indian shop

on di whole Indian road —


late in di midnight hour

ven yoo shoppers are wrap up quiet

ven di precinct is concrete-cool

vee cum down whispering stairs

and sit on my silver stool,

from behind di chocolate bars

vee stare past di half-price window signs

at di beaches ov di UK in di brightey moon —


from di stool each night she say,

        how much do yoo charge for dat moon baby?


from di stool each night I say,

        is half di cost ov yoo baby,


from di stool each night she say,

        how much does dat come to baby?


from di stool each night I say,

        is priceless baby —

Daljit Nagra

Compare how poets present romantic love in ‘Singh Song!’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and Relationships’.

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630 marks

Winter Swans

The clouds had given their all —
two days of rain and then a break
in which we walked,

the waterlogged earth
gulping for breath at our feet
as we skirted the lake, silent and apart,

until the swans came and stopped us
with a show of tipping in unison.
As if rolling weights down their bodies to their heads

they halved themselves in the dark water,
icebergs of white feather, paused before returning again
like boats righting in rough weather.

'They mate for life' you said as they left,
porcelain over the stilling water. I didn't reply
but as we moved on through the afternoon light,

slow-stepping in the lake's shingle and sand,
I noticed our hands, that had, somehow,
swum the distance between us

and folded, one over the other,
like a pair of wings settling after flight.

Owen Sheers

Compare how poets present romantic feelings in ‘'Winter Swans'’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and Relationships’.


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730 marks

Before You Were Mine

I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on

with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.

The three of you bend from the waist, holding

each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.

Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.


I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occur

in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows

the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance

like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close

with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.


The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?

I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,

and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square

till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,

with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?


Cha cha cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass,

stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then

I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere

in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts

where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.


Carol Ann Duffy

Compare how poets present relationships between parents and children in ‘Before You Were Mine’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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830 marks

When We Two Parted

When we two parted
  In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
  To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
  Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
  Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
  Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
  Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
  And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
  And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
  A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
  Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
  Who knew thee too well—
Long, long shall I rue thee,
  Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
  In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
  Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
  After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
  With silence and tears.

Lord Byron

Compare how poets present ideas about emotional pain in ‘When We Two Parted’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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930 marks

Love’s Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river

   And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

   With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

   All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

   Why not I with thine?—


See the mountains kiss high heaven

   And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

   If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

   And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

   If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Compare how poets present unfulfilled desire in ‘Love’s Philosophy’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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1030 marks

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

— They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.


Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles of years ago;

And some words played between us to and fro

On which lost the more by our love.


The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

Like an ominous bird a-wing…


Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,

And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

 

Thomas Hardy

Compare how poets present troubled relationships in ‘Neutral Tones’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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1130 marks

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day —
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled — since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take — the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show —
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

 

Cecil Day-Lewis

Compare how poets present growing distance in relationships in ‘Walking Away’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’. 

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1230 marks

Letters From Yorkshire

In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes,

he saw the first lapwings return and came

indoors to write to me, his knuckles singing

 

as they reddened in the warmth.

It’s not romance, simply how things are.

You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons

 

turning, me with my heartful of headlines

feeding words onto a blank screen.

Is your life more real because you dig and sow?

 

You wouldn’t say so, breaking ice on a waterbutt,

clearing a path through snow. Still, it’s you

who sends me word of that other world

 

pouring air and light into an envelope. So that

at night, watching the same news in different houses,

our souls tap out messages across the icy miles.

 

Maura Dooley

Compare how poets present connection across distance in ‘Letters From Yorkshire’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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1330 marks

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,

They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’

I had not thought that it would be like this.

 

Charles Causley

Compare how poets present an imagined closeness in ‘Eden Rock’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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1430 marks

Porphyria's Lover

The rain set early in to-night,

    The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

    And did its worst to vex the lake:

    I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

    She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

    Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

    Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

    And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

    And, last, she sat down by my side

    And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist,

    And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

And all her yellow hair displaced,

    And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

    And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me — she

    Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,

To set its struggling passion free

    From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

    And give herself to me for ever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

    Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

    For love of her, and all in vain:

    So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

    Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

    Made my heart swell, and still it grew

    While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

    Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

    In one long yellow string I wound

    Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

    I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

    I warily oped her lids: again

    Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

    About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

    I propped her head up as before,

    Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

    The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

    That all it scorned at once is fled,

    And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how

    Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

    And all night long we have not stirred,

    And yet God has not said a word!

 

Robert Browning

Compare how poets present power and control in relationships in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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1530 marks

Climbing My Grandfather

I decide to do it free, without a rope or net.

First, the old brogues, dusty and cracked;

an easy scramble onto his trousers,

pushing into the weave, trying to get a grip.

By the overhanging shirt I change

direction, traverse along his belt

to an earth-stained hand. The nails

are splintered and give good purchase,

the skin of his finger is smooth and thick

like warm ice. On his arm I discover

the glassy ridge of a scar, place my feet

gently in the old stitches and move on.

At his still firm shoulder, I rest for a while

in the shade, not looking down,

for climbing has its dangers, then pull

myself up the loose skin of his neck

to a smiling mouth to drink among teeth.

Refreshed, I cross the screed cheek,

to stare into his brown eyes, watch a pupil

slowly open and close. Then up over

the forehead, the wrinkles well-spaced

and easy, to his thick hair (soft and white

at this altitude), reaching for the summit,

where gasping for breath I can only lie

watching clouds and birds circle,

feeling his heat, knowing

the slow pulse of his good heart.

 

Andrew Waterhouse

Compare how poets present admiration in relationships in ‘Climbing My Grandfather’ and in one other poem from ‘Love and relationships’.

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