In England, a bullocks is a castrated male bovine.
The word poetic has a short E sound. A long E sound would be in a word like sheet.
I would say the correct answer is B. hyperbole.
Hyperbole is a figure of speech that authors use when they want to exaggerate things. So this 'vegetable love' cannot possibly grow larger than empires - the poem just wants to demonstrate the power and intensity of this love by using the figure of hyperbole. A paradox would include two completely opposite things, and <em>vast </em>and <em>slow </em>are not opposites.
