WAEC - Literature In English (2014 - No. 29)
Read the poem and answer the question
At dawn must I rise to till the rock
That our land has turned into
The land where on we'd gleefully harvested paddy
Planted and nurtured and tended on plots marshy
Our woes are bloody woes of accursed revenges
Of the land spirits aggrieved and by his fellow
Kindred blood has counted for less than no value
Brother's wife has been wife to other brother's brother
Communal loot has emptied our country silos
The earth has stooped breathing and sighed
Soldered tears has the moon shed
The earth was scorched at noon-day night
And our land has turned to hoeing rock.
The run-on lines convey the speaker's
At dawn must I rise to till the rock
That our land has turned into
The land where on we'd gleefully harvested paddy
Planted and nurtured and tended on plots marshy
Our woes are bloody woes of accursed revenges
Of the land spirits aggrieved and by his fellow
Kindred blood has counted for less than no value
Brother's wife has been wife to other brother's brother
Communal loot has emptied our country silos
The earth has stooped breathing and sighed
Soldered tears has the moon shed
The earth was scorched at noon-day night
And our land has turned to hoeing rock.
The run-on lines convey the speaker's
indignation
lamentation
disappointment
defiance
Explanation
Run-on lines, also known as enjambment, refer to lines in poetry where the sentence or phrase continues from one line to the next without a pause or punctuation mark at the end of the line. In this poem, the run-on lines create a sense of continuous flow and connection between ideas, which contributes to the overall tone of lamentation or mourning expressed by the speaker. The speaker laments the state of the land and expresses sorrow, grief, and lament over the hardships and losses endured.
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