For the aspirants who are preparing for the Civil Services Exam (IAS, IPS IFS) with English Literature optional, there are poems for which the student must study in preparation for answering a question about any one of them, taken from the syllabus. This includes 15 poems from Paper-I and 34 poems from Paper-II. Since PoemAnalysis.com has the largest database of poetry analysis on the internet, you can find below every poem analyzed from the English Optional syllabus. Please feel free to skip to the poem most relevant to you and if you want a poem to be analyzed that you cannot find on the site too, feel free to contact us.
The syllabus consists of two papers, designed to test a first-hand and ciritcal reading of texts prescribed from the following periods in English Literature:
Paper 1: 1600-1900
Paper 2: 1900-1990
There will be two compulsory questions in each paper:
(a) A short-notes question related to the topics for general study, and (b) A critical analysis of UNSEEN passages both in prose and verse.
UPSC CSE English Literature Optional
Paper–I (Section A)
John Donne
- Canonization
- Death, be not Proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
- The Good-Morrow
- On His Mistress Going to Bed
- The Relic
William Wordsworth
- Ode on Intimations of Immortality
- Tintern Abbey
- Three Years She Grew
- She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways
- Michael
- Resolution and Independence
- The World is Too Much With Us
- London, 1802 – ‘Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour’
- Upon Westminster Bridge
Alfred Tennyson
- In Memoriam A.H.H. (still analyzing)
Paper–II (Section A)
William Butler Yeats
- Easter 1916
- The Second Coming
- A Prayer for My Daughter
- Sailing to Byzantium
- The Tower
- Among School Children
- Leda and the Swan
- Meru
- Lapis Lazuli
- Byzantium
T.S. Eliot
W.H. Auden
- Partition
- Musee des Beaux Arts
- In Memory of W.B. Yeats
- Lay your sleeping head, my love (still analyzing)
- The Unknown Citizen
- Consider
- Mundus Et Infans
- The Shield of Achilles
- September 1, 1939
- Petition
Philip Larkin
- Next, Please
- Deceptions
- Afternoons
- Days
- Mr. Bleaney (still analyzing)
