Monday, May 24, 2021

IQ Test - 1

 IQ Test – 1  

 

1.     Create two words using the following ten letters each once only.

Clue: grand tune (4, 6)

 

MYSEVODLTA 

 

2.     Which is the odd one out?

 

ISTHMUS      FJORD            ATOLL           POLDER        ARCHIPELAGO

 

 

3.     CARTON               ENJOYMENT                 WORDSMITH

Which of the following words continues the above sequence?

 

COPY             REEF              COPE              REST              ACHE

 

 

4.     What word in brackets means the same as the word in capitals?

 

FORTE           (endowment, conduct, talent, redoubt, style)

 

 

5.     What number comes next in the sequence?

 

25, 32, 27, 36,? 

 

 

6.     Place two letters in each bracket so that these finish the word on the left and start the word on the right. The letters in the brackets, read downwards in pairs, will spell out a six-letter word.

Clue: (blue pencil)

 

FA (- -) SK

HO (- -) AN

KI (- -) AR 

 

 

7.     A car travels at a speed of 40 mph over a certain distance and then returns over the same distance at a speed of 60 mph. What is the average speed for the total journey? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8.     MEANDER: WIND

 

TRAVERSE: 

            

a.     Stampede

b.     Forward

c.     Across

d.     Retrace

e.     towards

 

9.     What do the following words have in common?

 

Legumes,        Quashed,         Affirms,          Cloaked

 

 

10.  What number should replace the question mark?

 

926 : 24

797 : 72

956 : ?

 

 

11.  Solve the anagrams to complete a quotation by Confucius.

Clue: Save something for a rainy day.

 

 When /P - - - p - - - - -/  /c - - - - , - - n - -/    /- -e / a - - / - - / it /. 

            /Soppy trier/          /demon coots/       /foul ales/

 

 

12.  Add one letter, not necessarily the letter, to each word at the front, end or middle to find two words that are opposite in meaning.

 

LOG    PITY

 

 

13.  What well-known proverb in opposite in meaning to the below?

 

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

 

 

14.  If meat in a river (3 in 6) is T(HAM)ES, can you find the path in celestial body (4 in 6)?

 

 P (- - - -) T


15.  In the two numerical sequence below, one number that appears in the to sequence should appear in the bottom sequence and vice versa. Which two numbers should be changed round?

 

10, 20, 31, 43, 54, 70

10, 18, 28, 40, 56, 70

 

 

16.  Place a word in the brackets that meant the same as the definitions outside the brackets.

 

Ringlet            (                  )               clasp

 

17.  A man weighs 75% of his own weight plus 39lbs. How much does he weight?

 

 

 

 

 

18.  A sample of eight gizmos. What is the probability of selecting three defective gizmos in the first three selections?

 

 

 

 

 

 

19.  Select two words that are synonyms plus an antonym of these two synonyms, from the list of words below. 

 

Optical,           Vigilant,          Rotund,           Manifest,         Remiss,           Feasible, 

 

Circumspect

 

 

 

20.  Change one letter only in each word below to form a familiar phrase.  

 

 

Aid      They    Sore

 

 ----



key will be published after 7 days from this date




Tuesday, May 04, 2021

The Blessed Damozel - D. G. Rossetti

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL – D. G. ROSSETTI

 

The blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of Heaven;

Her eyes were deeper than the depth 

Of waters stilled at even;

She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

 

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,

No wrought flowers did adorn,

But a white rose of Mary’s gift,

For service meetly worn;

Her hair that lay along her back

Was yellow like ripe corn.

 

Her seemed she scarce had been a day

One of God’s choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone                                                   

From that still look of hers;

Albeit, to them she left, her day

Had counted as ten years.

 

[To one, it is ten years of years,

            ……Yet now, and in this place,

Surely she leaned o’er me —her hair

Fell all about my face……

Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.

            The whole year sets apace.]

 

It was the rampart of God’s house

            That she was standing on;

By God built over the sheer depth

            The which is space begun;

So high, that looking downward thence

            She scarce could see the sun.

 

It lies in Heaven, across the flood

            Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath, the tides of day and night

            With flame and darkness ridge

The void, as low as where this earth

Spins like a fretful midge.

 

Around her, lovers, newly met

            ’Mid deathless love’s acclaims

Spoke ever more among themselves

            Their heart-remembered names;

And the souls mounting up to God

            Went by her like thin flames.

 

And still she bowed herself and stooped 

            Out of the circling charm;

Until her bosom must have made

The bar she leaned on warm,

And the lilies lay as if asleep

            Along her bended arm.

 

From the fixed place of Heaven she saw

            Time like a pulse shake fierce

Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove 

            Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when 

The stars snag in their spheres. 

 

The sun was gone now; the curled moon

Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf; and now

She spoke through the still weather.

Her voice was like the voice the stars

Had when they sang together.

 

[Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,

Strove not her accents there,

Fain to be hearkened? When those bells

Possessed the mid-day air,

Strove not her steps to reach my side

Down all the echoing stair?]

 

“I wish that he were come to me:

For the will come,” she said,

“Have I not prayed in Heaven? —on earth?

Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?

Are not two prayers a perfect strength?

And shall I feel afraid?

 

“When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is clothed in white,

I’ll take his hand and go with him

To the deep wells of light;

As unto a stream we will step down.

And bathe there in God’s sight.


“We two will stand beside that shrine,

Occult, withheld, untrod,

Whose lamps are stirred, continually

With prayer sent up to God;

And see our old prayers, granted, melt,

Each like a little cloud. 

 

“We two will lie i’ the shadow of 

That living mystic tree

Within whose secret growth the Dove

Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch

Saith His name audibly.

 

“And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice

Shall pause in, hushed and slow,

And find some knowledge at each pause,

Or some new thing to know.”

 

[Alas! We two, we two thou say’st!

Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift

To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul 

Was but its love for thee?]

 

“We two,” she said, “will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is,

With her five hand maidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret and Rosalys.

 

“Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them

Who are just born, being dead.

 

“He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:

Then will I lay my cheek

To his, and tell about our love,

Not once abashed or weak:

And the dear Mother will approve

My pride, and let me speak.

 

“Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

To Him round whom all souls

Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads

Bowed with their aureoles:

And angels meeting us shall sing

To their citherns and citoles.

 

“There will I ask if Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me:—

Only to live as once on earth

With Love, —only to be,

As then awhile, for ever now

Together, I and he.”

 

She gazed and listened and then said,

Less sad of speech than mild, —

“All this is when he comes.” She ceased,

The light thrilled towards her, fill’d

With angels is strong level flight,

Her eyes prayed , and she smil’d.

 

[I saw her smile.] But soon their path

Was vague in distant spheres:—

And then she cast he arms along

The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept. [I heard her tears.]

 

----

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Saturday, April 24, 2021

The Definition of Love - Andrew Marvel

 THE DEFINITION OF LOVE – ANDREW MARVEL

 

My love is of a birth as rare

As ’tis for object strange and high:

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

 

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown

But vanity flapt its tinsel wing.

 

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixt,

But fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

 

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves: nor lets them close:

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic pow’r depose.

 

And therefore, her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have placed,

(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embraced. 

 

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramped into a planisphere.

 

As lines so loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet:

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite can never meet.

 

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars. 

 

                   ----


The Definition of Love – Andrew Marvel

 

Andrew Marvell’s poem “The Definition of Love” is very much resembles to Joh Donne’s metaphysical lyrics. The poem depicts of love between souls and minds that is distinct from the physical body. The poem constitutes an exploration of love depicting two perfect yet irreconcilable loves — the love of the speaker and the love of his love. These two lovers are perfect in themselves, and they face each other in an opposition of perfection, but, according to the speaker’s formulation, the same condition prevents them meeting in the physical sphere. 

 

In the first stanza, the speaker makes an odd and striking claim — that his love is so unique and “rare” it must have been born of “Despair” and “Impossibility”, which is a surprisingly dark and tragic formulation of love. The speaker goes on to explain that only despair could have revealed this love to him, because it shows both the utter perfection of the love he feels, and at the same time, the impossibility of its physical fulfilment. Hence, the speaker constructs an oxymoron — “Magnanimous Despair” — as an attempt to bring his reader closer to understanding the nature of his love. 

 

Andrew Marvell further develops the speaker’s frustration at being separated from his beloved in stanza three, where the speaker elaborates upon the role of Fate. The speaker claims that his perfect love would lead him to the place where his “extended soul is fixed”, or in other words, would lead his body to the location where his soul is already connected to his beloved’s. However, Fate actively prevents this by erecting an “iron wedge” between the two lovers. The speaker then explains that Fate keeps the lovers from each other because it perceives their union as usurping its power. The speaker represents Fate as a tyrant with a “jealous eye” who desires to maintain control over the two perfect loves.

 

He goes on to say that Fate has given “decrees of steel” that place the two lovers distantly apart, which effectively prevents a perfect union of both their physical and spiritual love. The symbols of an iron wedge and a steel decree suggest Fate’s dominion over the hard, physical realities of the body, which contrasts sharply with the speaker’s claim that the lovers enjoy metaphysical perfection in their own transcendent love. 

 

Next, the speaker attempts to imagine the only conditions in which he and his lover might be physically united. These include the Heavens falling, an earthquake collapsing the Earth, or the entire planet being compressed into a flat plane. This speaker uses the paradoxical term “planisphere” for this imagined event. Each of these conditions is impossible, and as the speaker acknowledges this fact, he goes on to construct a new, geometrical conceit that contrasts the love of the speaker and his lady with a more typical love. Their love is like a pair of parallel lines— infinitely perfect as they extend— yet they shall never meet. Meanwhile common love is less perfect, like a pair of oblique lines, which by nature will eventually intersect.  

 

In the final stanza, Andrew Marvell delivers two definitions of the speaker’s love: it is both “the conjunction of the mind” and the “opposition of the stars”. This two-part definition encapsulates the divided nature of their love. On one hand, the image of the conjunction suggests proximity and harmony, while the image of opposition implies that their love implicitly refers to the power of Fate in the physical universe, which in this case, prevents the lovers from meeting on the place of material embodiment.  

 

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borrowed and edited 

The Express - Stephen Spender

THE EXPRESS – STEPHEN SPENDER

 

After the first powerful plain manifesto

The black statement of pistons, without more fuss

But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.

Without bowing and with restrained unconcern

She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,

 

The gasworks and at last the heavy page

Of death, printed by gravestones in the cemetery,

Beyond the town there lies the open country

Where, gathering speed, she acquires mystery,

The luminous self-possession of ships on ocean.

 

It is now she begins to sing— at first quite low

Then loud, and at last with a jazzy madness—

The song of her whistle screaming at curves,

Of deafening tunnels, brakes, innumerable bolts.

And always light, aerial, underneath

 

Goes the elate metre of her wheels.

Steaming through metal landscape on her lines

She plunges new eras of wild happiness

Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves

And parallels clean like the steel of guns. 

 

At last, further than Edinburgh or Rome,

Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night

Where only a low streamline brightness

Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is white.

Ah, like a comet through flame she moves entranced

 

Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough

Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal. 

 

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The Fun They Had - Issac Asimov

  The Fun They Had – Isaac Asimov   [ Science fiction is a kind of fantasy that usually concern changes that science may bring about in the ...