Cambridge IGCSE™

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 0408

Unseen Poems
* 6 4 8 0 5 8 6 0 3 9 *

INSTRUCTIONS
● Answer one question: either Question 1 or Question 2.
● Follow the instructions on the front cover of the answer booklet. If you need additional answer paper,
ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet.

INFORMATION
● The total mark for this paper is 25.
● All questions are worth equal marks.

DC (RCL (GO)) 184095/1

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1 Read carefully the following poem.

How does the poet memorably convey her experience of swimming in the sea?

To help you answer this question, you might consider:

• how the poet describes the sea

• how she portrays herself whilst swimming
• how she describes her thoughts and feelings in the final stanza.

Bathing Off Roseland

The sea, that turns old bottles into gems,

Has made of me a bird.
Now with all four wings outspread
I dip and hover, vacillate1, recover,
Lulled and directionless,
Who on the cliff with conscious tread
Moved to some purpose.

It is a firmament2 that curves below,

A clear capsicum3 green
And purple bloom of aubergine4;
Wayward and flippant I am in my element,
Feeling the speed
Of the wheeling world and the sails careening5 Above
my head.

I am sustained by powers not my own,

As on the tide of prayer
Another’s love can sway me toward
Some good that of myself I would not:
Powerful, hidden to me,
As the purpose which drives these great ships forward
Parting the sea.

1 vacillate: hesitate
2 firmament : dome of the sky
3 capsicum: bell pepper
4 aubergine: brinjal or eggplant
5 careening: til

© UCLES 2022 0475/42/F/M/22

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2 Read carefully the poem on the opposite page. The poet and his wife are watching their daughter

Julia’s swimming lesson.

How does the poet memorably convey this experience to you?

To help you answer this question, you might consider:

• how the poet portrays the role of the swimming instructor
• how he conveys the reactions of his daughter Julia and his wife to this experience
• what he suggests Julia will learn from this experience.

For Julia, in the Deep Water

The instructor we hire

because she does not love you
Leads you into the deep water, The
deep end
Where the water is darker –
Her open, encouraging arms That
never get nearer
Are merciless for your sake.

You will dream this water always

Where nothing draws nearer,
Wasting your valuable breath You
will scream for your mother –Only
your mother is drowning Forever in
the thin air
Down at the deep end.
She is doing nothing,
She never did anything harder. And
I am beside her.

I am beside her in this imagination.

We are waiting
Where the water is darker.
You are over your head,
Screaming, you are learning Your
way toward us,
You are learning how
In the helpless water
It is with our skill
We live in what kills us.
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3 Read carefully the poem on the opposite page. The poet feels he is being watched.

How does the poet create such a disturbing atmosphere in this poem?

To help you answer this question, you might consider:

• the effects created by the night-time setting
• how the poet portrays ‘the watcher’
• how the writing suggests that there is no escape from ‘the watcher’.

The Watcher in the Square

I wake in the night with a start. The lovers hurry by

A log settles in the grate1
And what was that?
A cat? A rat?
I hate them both with all my heart.
What business have they being up so late?
And what about that man
On the dark side of the square?
What harm has he
In mind for me?
What dark malevolent plan?
What business has he standing watching there?
The night is on the tiles.
A mood settles on the moon.
It gives the faintest of all watery smiles.
It will be gone soon.
But when the smile is gone
And darkness has its day
The watcher at my window will watch on.
He will not slip away.
The watcher in the square.
They seem so busy in their ecstasy.
Hatred has time to spare.
Hatred knows no land,
No hearth, no wife, no brood,
And time lies heavy on the hater’s hand
And cold as the moon’s mood.
Though I take the forest track
Or ride the mountain trail
I’ll never shake the watcher off my back,
The wizard off my tail
In the stable lantern’s soot,
In the soft step on the stair
I shall glimpse the eye, I shall waken to
the foot Of the watcher in the square.

1 grate: fireplace
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4 Read carefully the poem on the opposite page. The poet is travelling to visit an ancient monument.

How does the poet make this experience so memorable for you?

To help you answer this question, you might consider:

• how the poet describes his journey to the monument
• how he vividly portrays the monument itself
• how the writing conveys the disturbing nature of this experience for him.
A Heap of Stones
I asked directions
at a farmhouse door:
they pointed to a field
high on the hillside
where they said
the Giant’s Grave
stood, and waited,
watching by their gate,
an old man
and his wife, watching
till I turned the road,
wondering perhaps why
a man would climb
half a mountain to see
a heap of stones.

Over the ditch and through

the rising bog spotted
with tiny spits of wild cotton
I moved, a mile
an hour, until the land
below became a mood,
long shadows sweeping
inland, eating light …

Armed with bright pictures

of club and claw
I searched until suddenly
it grinned at me:
filling the hole in a crazy hedge
it overflowed into the field –
great tables impaled
upon a pencil of stone;
a tabernacle1 of ancient death
dug deep as an evil eye
in the skull of the hill.
I banished urgent images
from my downward path and one
by one unclenched
the stone cold fingers round my brain.

1 tabernacle: place of worship

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5 Read carefully the following poem. The poet observes two lovers in the street. He comments to

them and to us on the progress of their relationship.

How does the poet powerfully express his feelings about love?

To help you answer this question, you might consider:

• how the poet speaks to the lovers
• how he invites us to think about the lovers
• how he conveys his views about the lovers’ past and future.

On Seeing Two Lovers in the Street

You do not know
What is done with you,
Do not fear
What’s done or undone:
You are not here,
You are not two
Any more, but one.

Pity these two

Who all have lost,
Envy these two
Who have paid their cost
To gain this soul
That dazzling hovered
Between them whole
There they are lost

And their tracks are covered;

Nothing can find them
Until they awake
In themselves or take
New selves to bind them.

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6 Read carefully the poem opposite. The poet wonders why her friend Flora always has the Queen
of Hearts when they play cards.

How does the poet suggest what she feels about her friend’s luck?

To help you answer this question, you might consider:

• how the poet tries to catch her friend out
• how the writing memorably brings the cards to life
• what the poet may suggest about the different fates of Flora and herself.

The Queen of Hearts

How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we

Play cards together, you invariably,
However the pack parts,
Still hold the Queen of Hearts?

I’ve scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,

Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:
But sift them as I will,
Your ways are secret still.

I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;

But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:
Vain hope, vain forethought1 too;
That Queen still falls to you.

I dropped her once, prepense2; but, ere the deal

Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:
‘There should be one card more,’
You said, and searched the floor.

I cheated once; I made a private notch

In Heart-Queen’s back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;
Yet such another back
Deceived me in the pack:

The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown

An imitative dint that seemed my own;
This notch, not of my doing,
Misled me to my ruin.

It baffles me to puzzle out the clue,

Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:
Unless, indeed, it be
Natural affinity3.

1 forethought: anticipation
2 prepense: deliberately
3 affinity: close resemblance or connection

© UCLES 2022 0486/42/O/N/22

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