This question refers to the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains," by author Sara Teasdale. Here is the full poem:
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Answer:
The option that best states what lines 7-10 suggest about the setting of the poem is:
C. The poem takes place in nature, a short time after humankind has destroyed itself from war.
Explanation:
The poem above refers to and criticizes the horrors of World War I. Every single image described can be used to refer to a war-related event: the low fence-wire alludes the barbed wire used in trenches, the swallows flying overhead are the military aircraft, etc. Lines 7-10 speak of Spring waking up after mankind has perished. What the speaker wishes to convey is that Nature is indifferent to our thirst for death. Even if we were to destroy all of humanity, life would still go on for the rest of the planet. We do not make the slightest difference from a cosmic point of view. The forests, the animals, their cycle would go on, unshaken.
For that reason, the best answer is letter C. The poem takes place in nature, a short time after humankind has destroyed itself from war.
