The Voice Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as what you…
The speaker hears a possible voice but asks whether it is hers and longs to see her. That uncertainty and invisibility are tantalising; the alternatives assert an observed…
Choose your answer
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as what you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me
But as first, when our day was fair
Can it be you that I hear ? Let me view you, then
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me : yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness
Heard no more again far or near ?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
And the woman calling.
What is tantalizing about the speaker’s experience in stanza 2 ?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer C
The speaker hears a possible voice but asks whether it is hers and longs to see her. That uncertainty and invisibility are tantalising; the alternatives assert an observed disappearance or a secure echo that the poem does not establish.
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