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"When I was young,
I was so gay and mean,
And I drank and chased the girls,
Just like young St Augustine.
Saint Augustine,
He got to be a saint.
So if I get to be one, also,
Please, Mama, don't you faint."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
147 times |
| Correct: |
51 times (23.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
96 times (43.2%) |
| Skipped: |
75 times (33.8%) |
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"Think she's asleep now
It makes you sleep
Better than Horlicks
Not so pretty really when you get close up
Wonder what her name is
Now she's taken all the blankets
Too selfish that's her trouble
Aren't we all."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
104 times |
| Correct: |
37 times (17.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
67 times (32.1%) |
| Skipped: |
105 times (50.2%) |
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|
Whose poem 'Christmas' includes the line: "And hideous tie so kindly meant"?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
108 times |
| Correct: |
31 times (14.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
77 times (36.7%) |
| Skipped: |
102 times (48.6%) |
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In 1935 poet W.H. Auden married Erika, the daughter of which famous 20th-century novelist?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
759 times |
| Correct: |
390 times (31.2%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
369 times (29.5%) |
| Skipped: |
492 times (39.3%) |
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Apropos which year did poet W.H. Auden write: "As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade"?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
105 times |
| Correct: |
61 times (36.1%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
44 times (26.0%) |
| Skipped: |
64 times (37.9%) |
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About which poet did W.H. Auden write in a memorial poem: "O all the instruments agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day"?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
116 times |
| Correct: |
65 times (34.2%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
51 times (26.8%) |
| Skipped: |
74 times (38.9%) |
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If cats could write poetry, in Henry Beard's Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse, whose Practical Cat might have submitted an entry entitled "The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat?"
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
255 times |
| Correct: |
199 times (65.9%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
56 times (18.5%) |
| Skipped: |
47 times (15.6%) |
|
|
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Which modern poet urged us (along with his father) to 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
110 times |
| Correct: |
84 times (66.1%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
26 times (20.5%) |
| Skipped: |
17 times (13.4%) |
|
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For which composer did poet W.H. Auden write a libretto, The Rake's Progress?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
74 times |
| Correct: |
26 times (22.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
48 times (42.1%) |
| Skipped: |
40 times (35.1%) |
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Who wrote these lines?
"All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
68 times |
| Correct: |
28 times (27.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
40 times (39.6%) |
| Skipped: |
33 times (32.7%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote the little poem "Jamesian" which consists of only these two lines:
"Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed"?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
61 times |
| Correct: |
22 times (22.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
39 times (39.0%) |
| Skipped: |
39 times (39.0%) |
|
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|
Which English-language poet wrote the following words in answer to a fan letter he received?
"I suppose that my classical training has been of some use to me in furnishing good models, and making me fastidious, and telling me what to leave out. My chief object in publishing my verses was to give pleasure to a few young men here and there, and I am glad if they have given pleasure to you."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
76 times |
| Correct: |
24 times (19.2%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
52 times (41.6%) |
| Skipped: |
49 times (39.2%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these words?
"O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
78 times |
| Correct: |
29 times (25.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
49 times (43.0%) |
| Skipped: |
36 times (31.6%) |
|
|
|
To which fellow poet did T.S. Eliot dedicate his poem The Waste Land?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
99 times |
| Correct: |
77 times (57.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
22 times (16.3%) |
| Skipped: |
36 times (26.7%) |
|
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Which author said of his work that it "wouldn't be what it is if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America"?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
71 times |
| Correct: |
23 times (20.9%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
48 times (43.6%) |
| Skipped: |
39 times (35.5%) |
|
|
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Martha Cooley's novel The Archivist concerns a research student and the curator of the literary archive of which famous poet's manuscripts?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
39 times |
| Correct: |
17 times (34.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
22 times (44.9%) |
| Skipped: |
10 times (20.4%) |
|
|
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Which American poet penned the following lines:
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.The Mentor Book of Major American Poets
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
44 times |
| Correct: |
22 times (35.5%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
22 times (35.5%) |
| Skipped: |
18 times (29.0%) |
|
|
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Who wrote this little poem?
"Experiment to me
Is every one I meet.
If it contain a kernel?
The figure of a nut
Presents upon a tree,
Equally plausibly;
But meat within is requisite,
To squirrels and to me."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
62 times |
| Correct: |
44 times (48.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
18 times (19.8%) |
| Skipped: |
29 times (31.9%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote this little poem?
"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
63 times |
| Correct: |
38 times (41.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
25 times (27.5%) |
| Skipped: |
28 times (30.8%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these lines?
"What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
62 times |
| Correct: |
34 times (38.2%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
28 times (31.5%) |
| Skipped: |
27 times (30.3%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these lines?
"Carry her over the water,
And set her down under the tree,
Where the culvers white all day and all night,
And the winds from every quarter,
Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
68 times |
| Correct: |
24 times (28.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
44 times (52.4%) |
| Skipped: |
16 times (19.0%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these lines?
"She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
58 times |
| Correct: |
30 times (37.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
28 times (34.6%) |
| Skipped: |
23 times (28.4%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these lines?
"I had this thought a while ago,
'My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'"
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
60 times |
| Correct: |
24 times (30.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
36 times (45.0%) |
| Skipped: |
20 times (25.0%) |
|
|
|
Who claimed this?
"For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper; it flows south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
58 times |
| Correct: |
18 times (21.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
40 times (48.2%) |
| Skipped: |
25 times (30.1%) |
|
|
|
"The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died."
Who wrote this?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
57 times |
| Correct: |
34 times (33.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
23 times (22.8%) |
| Skipped: |
44 times (43.6%) |
|
|
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"Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast."
These are the last lines of a poem on the downfall of which city -- and who wrote it?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
61 times |
| Correct: |
33 times (34.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
28 times (28.9%) |
| Skipped: |
36 times (37.1%) |
|
|
|
"Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again."
Who wrote this -- and on what occasion (or subject)?
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
239 times |
| Correct: |
121 times (31.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
118 times (30.6%) |
| Skipped: |
146 times (37.9%) |
|
|
|
From The Top 500 Poems edited by William Harmon:
Name the quoted poet:
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
41 times |
| Correct: |
30 times (53.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
11 times (19.6%) |
| Skipped: |
15 times (26.8%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these lovely lines?
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
40 times |
| Correct: |
23 times (42.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
17 times (31.5%) |
| Skipped: |
14 times (25.9%) |
|
|
|
Who wrote these lovely lines?
"How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day."
|
see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
38 times |
| Correct: |
22 times (40.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
16 times (29.6%) |
| Skipped: |
16 times (29.6%) |
|
close
