Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

1. The speaker was angry with
a. a friend.
b. a foe.
c. his friend and his foe.
2. How did the speaker handle his anger toward his
friend?
a. He told his friend about it and it went away.
b. He kept it to himself and it grew.
c. He kept it to himself and it went away.
3. How did the speaker handle his anger toward
his foe?
a. He told his friend about it and it went away.
b. He kept it to himself and it grew.
c. He kept it to himself and it went away.
You probably figured out the answers without
too much trouble: 1. c, 2. a, 3. b.
Now look at the second stanza. The key to under-
standing this stanza is knowing what “it” refers to.
Reread the first and second stanzas carefully in order to
answer the next question.
4. “It” refers to
a. tears.
b. smiles.
c. wrath.
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F I N D I N G M E A N I N G I N L I T E R AT U R E
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Choice c—“wrath”—is the last thing mentioned
in the first stanza, so it follows that “wrath” is what “it”
refers to.
The second stanza tells us that the speaker
“water’d” it (his wrath) with fears and “sunned” it with
smiles and wiles. How can this be? Can you literally
water and sun your anger? No, but the speaker is not
being literal here. Instead, he is using figurative lan-
guage. Like the similes we saw earlier about Coach
Lerner, comparing his voice to a foghorn and his hair-
cut to that of a drill sergeant, this stanza uses a
metaphor—a comparison that doesn’t use the words
like or as—to compare the speaker’s wrath to some-
thing that grows with water and sun. Now, given these
clues (and the best clue of all, the title of the poem), to
what exactly is the speaker comparing his wrath?