The Thursday Quiz is a twelve item is-it-or-isn't-it test of your knowledge, reasoning, stamina, and moxie!
Remember always the Fundamental Rules of the Thursday Quiz:
1. The Thursday Quiz is a POP quiz. No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. Violators will never be able to look at themselves in the mirror again.
Famous Poems III2. Don't get all stressed out about it! It's supposed to be fun!
All of the following poems selected the top hundred most-anthologized poems of all time. I've given you the poet, the title, and the first several lines of the poem. In which ones does everything line up? And, in which ones am I just messin' with you?
1. William Blake, "Piping Down the Valleys Wild," 1789.
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
2. Emily Dickinson, "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," 1865.
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
3. John Donne, "Holy Sonnet XIV," 1618.
BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
4. Robert Herrick, "Upon Julia's Clothes," 1648.
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me!
5. Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty," 1918.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
6. John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," 1816.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold....
7. John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," 1819.
TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
8. Richard Lovelace, "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars," 1649.
I.
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
9. Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," 1951.
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
10. Henry Vaughan, "The Retreat," late 1600s.
HAPPY those early days, when I
Shin'd in my Angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white celestial thought:
When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back—at that short space—
Could see a glimpse of His bright face....
11. William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," 1888.
Ten years ago on a cold dark night,
someone was killed 'neath the town hall lights.
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed,
that the slayer who ran looked a lot like me.
She walks these hills, in a long black veil.
She visits my grave, when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows, but me
12. Thomas Wyatt, "They flee from me that sometime did me seek," 1557.
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That sometime they have put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Submit your answers in the comments. Rhyming couplets optional.
(The first Thursday Quiz on Famous Poems was TQXXI. Missy took the Gold.
The second was TQXLIII. gs49 took the Gold that time.)
13 comments:
1. Gerard Manley Hopkins is mad at M5000!
2. Miss Dickinson did write a poem about a snake with this title (all of the titles being her first lines)... but is this it? Just does not sound right.
3. Okay, this one rings true.
4. I recognize this...I'll agree even if I am not totally sure it's Herrick's.
5. No, no, no, cold gray M5000!
6. Hmmm. (Freshman year was so very long ago...) I'll say yes
7. No, don't think so.
8. Oh, dear. Yes?
9. Argh. I'll say yes even if I suspect this is from a different poem...
10. I'll say this is new to me...and I know M5000 is not to be trusted... and it sounds more modern than 1600s...in fact, it sounds like Wordsworth! No.
11. NO!
12. No clue, but I'll say okay. Maybe he was locked up for a long time and had nothing else to write about.
Well, that was a useful way to put me in my place! Thanks SO much. Must hie me down to the sewing room to make a little M5000 doll and find the long pins....
1. No
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. No
5. Yes
6. No
7. No
8. No
9. No
10. Yes
11. No. Snort.
12. Yes. Is this a poem about mice?
1 um. no.
2 y she was a morose dude.
3 y all you really need to do to imitate donne tho' is throwe alote ofe 'e's' ontoe thee ende of wordes.
4 n just because i feel the need for a n.
5 y probably, but omg how dreadful.
6 sure. sounds vaguely keatsian.
7 n sounds not vaguely keatsian
8 n god i hate poetry
9 y
10 y
11 n
12 y
I have a history of embarrassing myself on these, but let's have at.
1 no, that's Hopkins
2 yes
3 no--I'm thinking Herrick. Too religious for Donne.
4 no--I'm thinking Donne. Too worldly for Herrick.
5 no
6 yes
7 no
8, this is the Keats, methinks another switcheroo
9 no, that's Fern Hill
10 who knows? yes
11 you know, Mick Jagger sings this on one of the Chieftains CDs. Oh, no, by the way.
12 yes
Why are you torturing me with poetry and 'N' countries?! Just get all this crap out of the way before the next decathlon so you can ask the important Harry Potter questions then!
No to 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11.
Yes to rest.
7 and 8 are switched. Do I get bonus points for knowing that?
1-n
2-y
3-y
4-n
5-n
6-y
7-n
8-n
9-n
10-y
11-y
12-y
Can we plz do a quiz on Latin American/US SW lit sometime? I think I've blocked most British lit, along with all other high school memories.
Well, let's see...
1. Nope, that's Hopkins' "Pied Beauty"
2. Yep
3. Yep
4. Yep
5. Nope, that's some Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
6. Yep.
7. & 8. are nopes: the old switcheroo.
9. It's Dylan, but it's "Fern Hill."
10. Yep!
11. No, that's an old Johnny Cash song.
12. Yes.
So, out of those brave Quiz warriors who dared set foot in the ring today, the winners are:
Mr. Rex Parker, who takes his fifth Gold Star with a complete slate of correct answers.
Mrs.5000, who overcomes the curse of the Poetry Quizes by nailing 10/12 for her second straight Silver Star.
And Eversaved, who despite having blocked out her memories of British Lit is still afflicted enough to grab her second Blue Star in three weeks.
@Elaine: I should know better to piss off a guy whose middle name is "Manly."
@Eliz: Superficially. I suspect it's really a poem about babes.
@Kadonk: One more odious topic out of the way!
@Rex: Bonus points? Metaphorically, yes.
@Ms. Saved: Maybe. The topics are all plotted months and months in advance, many of them according to a pattern that... oh, never mind.
Wait-- isn't Rex Parker a thinly-disguised professor of English Literature? That's like giving Greg Louganis a prize for doing a nice jack-knife dive! (I'm not just being bitter about falling for some of your tricks.)
BTW, any headaches lately?? (Gets out another pin.)
Rex Parker, as you can clearly see by his avatar, is the commander of an intergalactic spaceship.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
rp
Rexxy,
I think you blew your cover some time back, eh?
"Winner, winner/chicken dinner"??????
That is just so, so sad.
The 44th greatest Xword puzzle-solver in the world should be able to do better! Where is the bon mot that will put me it my place?... and so on? (Where is Cyrano when we need him?)
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