Huh.

The set text for my exam were an excerpt from Room with a View, something I didn't even glance because the author was US American and I'm an anglist (turns out it was a quite interesting short story by a gay POC author on freedom), and The Solitary Reaper by Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth. Huh.

Obviously, given his popularity, I prepared pretty much everything BUT him.

Also, my professor is a big fan of texts being "very much concise and to the point", and I think that my 17-page, rambling, at times essayistic text quite cuts that. Gnaagh.

The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.