Which theme is prominent in this excerpt from "to an athlete dying young" by a. e. housman?

now you will not swell the rout
of lads that wore their honours out,
runners whom renown outran
and the name died before the man.

so set, before its echoes fade,
the fleet foot on the sill of shade,
and hold to the low lintel up
the still-defended challenge-cup

and round that early-laurelled head
will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
and find unwithered on its curls
the garland briefer than a girl's.

a) the inevitability of death
b) the fame and glory an athlete receives
c) the short-lived nature of glory
d) the short-lived strength of human love

Read the excerpt from act i of the importance of being earnest. lady bracknell. well, i must say, algernon, that i think it is high time that mr. bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. this shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. . i should be much obliged if you would ask mr. bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on saturday, for i rely on you to arrange my music for me. it is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much. what aspect of lady bracknell’s behavior does wilde use to poke fun at the importance placed on frivolous events in formal society? her concern with a party instead of mr. bunbury’s health her interest in playing classical music at her reception her jealousy over algernon’s friendship with the sickly mr. bunbury her concern about the health of algernon’s friend

Which line in this excerpt from the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald contains a simile? about half way between west egg and new york the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. this is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

The greatest gift the sumerians gave the world was the invention of writing. the sumerians were wealthy people. they needed some way to keep track of what they owned. they began drawing pictures. they used a reed as a pen. they drew on soft pieces of clay. the soft clay was then dried in the sun. the tablet became a permanent record. later, the sumerian drawings changed into wedge-shaped symbols. this kind of writing is called cuneiform. by putting symbols together, the sumerians could write entire sentences.