Also in 2026 Practice Test A English, question 5; 2025 Practice Test A English, question 6.
Passage Snowy Mountains
Snowy Mountains
by John Gould Fletcher
Higher and still more high,
Palaces made for cloud,
Above the dingy city-roofs
Blue-white like angels with broad wings,
Pillars of the sky at rest
The mountains from the great plateau
Uprise.
But the world heeds them not;
They have been here now for too long a time.
The world makes war on them,
Tunnels their granite cliffs,
Splits down their shining sides,
Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements,
Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace.
Vaster and still more vast,
Peak after peak, pile after pile,
Wilderness still untamed,
To which the future is as was the past,
Barrier spread by Gods,
Sunning their shining foreheads,
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
The mountains swing along
The south horizon of the sky;
Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice
The mists that dance and drive before the sun.
“Snowy Mountains” by John Gould Fletcher—Public Domain
Question
Read lines 21–22 from the poem.
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
How do the lines help convey the speaker’s point of view?
- AThey suggest that the speaker wants to remove the obstacles that prevent others from experiencing the wonders of nature.
- BThey reveal the speaker’s opinion that some people are too busy to appreciate natural beauty.
- CThey reflect the speaker’s dismay that people destroy the natural landscape without understanding the ramifications of their actions.
- DThey explain that the speaker is confident that nature will never be fully destroyed by people.
Show the answer
Correct answer: C
The question asks how lines 21–22 help convey the speaker’s point of view.
A. Incorrect. The word “barrier” (line 21) refers to the speaker’s opinion that the mountains were “spread by Gods” (line 19) and not to an obstacle that the speaker thinks should be removed.
B. Incorrect. While the lines indicate that people have lost the need to connect with nature, they do not reveal that the speaker thinks that the cause of this loss is busyness.
C. CORRECT. The words “those who do not need / The joy” in lines 21–22 reflect the speaker’s sadness that people do not realize that they are destroying something wonderful and irreplaceable.
D. Incorrect. Although the speaker does say that the stone is “time-resisting” (line 22), this belief is only a small detail of the speaker’s point of view.
Question analysis
Two lines from the final stanza of “Snowy Mountains” describe a barrier broken down by people who do not need “The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,” and students must explain how these lines convey the speaker’s point of view. The phrasing is compact and old-fashioned, with an unusual use of “need,” so working out the plain meaning comes before choosing among close descriptions of the speaker’s feelings.
- Grade level
- Grade 8 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Above grade 7 Grade 7 students often infer a speaker’s attitude from clear statements. Here the attitude must be drawn from a compressed sentence broken across two lines, and the choices differ in fine shades of feeling and cause.
- Estimated difficulty
- Hard: combines ideas, needs a plan, and has more than one tempting wrong answer.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- Complex sentences major
- Reading between the lines moderate
- Hard words minor
- Evidence
- Answered from one sentence or line
- Reading level
- Passage: 161 words (a poem; reading level not measured); question and choices: about grade 9, 99 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
Before any choice can be judged, the compressed, inverted verse has to be put into plain English: people with no use for the old stone’s joy have broken the barrier down. Once that paraphrase is in hand, the speaker’s sorrow is clear, yet two wrong choices offer nearby readings. One supplies a cause the lines never give, busyness, and the other turns the stone’s endurance into a promise that the same sentence contradicts.
Complex sentences major Understanding the question
The lines break mid-phrase, “those who do not need / The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,” inside a sentence whose subject arrives only in line 23, so who breaks what must be untangled first. (Abedi & Lord, 2001; Freedle & Kostin, 1993; Messick, 1989)
Reading between the lines moderate Working it out
Neither dismay nor ignorance is stated; both must be inferred from describing the people as not needing “The joy” of the stone they break down. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Hard words minor Understanding the question
“Barrier” here means the mountain range as a great wall, not an obstacle, and the key turns on “ramifications,” a word many seventh graders will not know. (Perfetti, 2007; Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Strategy: Read lines 21–22 with the lines just before them, restate the sentence in your own words, and then decide what the speaker thinks of the people it describes.
Traps
- Dictionary meaning, not meaning here: A common meaning of the word that does not fit its use in this text.
- Outside knowledge: A choice is plausible in the real world but not supported by this text.
- Too broad or too strong: A choice overstates, generalizes, or uses absolute words the text does not support.
The wrong answers, classified
A Dictionary meaning, not meaning here (Perfetti, 2007)
Hears “Barrier” in its everyday sense of something blocking the way, but here it is the mountain range itself, “spread by Gods,” and the speaker regrets its breaking.
B Outside knowledge (King et al., 2004; Recht & Leslie, 1988)
Supplies a familiar modern explanation, people too busy for nature, though the lines say only that some people do not need this joy and never say why.
D Too broad or too strong (King et al., 2004)
Stretches “time-resisting” into certainty that nature can never be destroyed, overlooking that these lines show the barrier already “broken down” by people.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks about point of view: what the speaker thinks and feels. Read lines 21 and 22, and decide what they show about the speaker’s attitude toward the people in them.
Read the lines with the ones before
Two lines earlier, the poem names the mountains a “Barrier spread by Gods” (line 19). A barrier is a wall, and here the wall is the mountain range itself. Line 21 says this barrier is “broken down by those who do not need” something. Line 22 says what that something is: “The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone.”
Put the lines in plain words
Time-resisting means the stone has held out against ages of time. Storm-worn means storms have rubbed it down. So this stone is very old and very tough. In plain words: the mountains are being torn down by people who have no use for the joy this ancient stone can give. The speaker sounds sad and troubled that something so lasting is wrecked by people who do not value it.
Check each choice
- A does not fit. Here “Barrier” means the mountains, not something blocking the way. The speaker is sorry it was broken, not eager to remove it.
- B does not fit. The lines never give a reason, such as being too busy. That idea comes from outside the poem.
- C fits. Dismay is a mix of sadness and alarm. Ramifications are the effects an action leads to later on. The speaker is dismayed that people wreck the mountains with no thought for what they are losing.
- D does not fit. The stone is “time-resisting,” but the same lines show it broken down. They express sorrow, not confidence.
Choose the answer
The lines show the mountains being broken by people who see no value in them, and the speaker is upset. So the answer is C.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
B is the strongest trap, because being too busy for nature sounds like a fair reason. But lines 21 and 22 never explain why these people do not need the stone’s joy. B adds a cause from outside the poem. C stays with what the lines show: damage to the mountains, done by people who do not value them, and the speaker’s distress.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Snowy Mountains” as printed (page 142)
