Directions: select the answer that best completes the sentence.
Given the dangers facing the world today, Yeats' bleak vision in his 19th-century poem "The Second Coming" seems ________.
(a) erroneous
(b) hysterical
(c) fleeting
(d) prophetic
(e) nostalgic
Discussion: For this question we need to find a word that creates a plausible relationship between "the dangers facing the world today" and Yeats' "bleak vision." Since the bleak vision seems to be true today, we can say Yeats' was being "prophetic," choice (d).
Vocabulary:
- erroneous - wrong
- fleeting - short-lived; brief
- hysterical - uncontrollably emotional; laughable
- nostalgic - a yearning for the past
- prophetic - predictive; able to foretell events
