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Quiz about War Poetry by Wilfred Owen
Quiz about War Poetry by Wilfred Owen

War Poetry by Wilfred Owen Trivia Quiz


This is all about Wilfred Owen's (1893 - 1918) poetry. Owen was an English poet who fought (and fell) in World War I. A good many of his poems were written directly in the trenches.

A multiple-choice quiz by PearlQ19. Estimated time: 6 mins.
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Author
PearlQ19
Time
6 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
244,567
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
272
Awards
Top 35% Quiz
Last 3 plays: Guest 157 (1/10), Guest 157 (3/10), Guest 47 (2/10).
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Question 1 of 10
1. Here is what Owen once said about his poetry. Complete the quote: "I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity. (...) All a poet can do today is____" Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. What is the poem I'm quoting this from called: "I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears / And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts / And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts / And rusted every bayonet with His tears..."?
Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. "Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed / But may thy heart-beat kiss it night and day / Until the name grow vague and wear away." What object is being referred to?
Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. One of Owen's most impressive poems is "Dulce And Decorum Est," where he describes what war is like, and, after saying something along the lines of "If you had seen what I have seen", ends with the cynical lines: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory / The old ______: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori." Fill in the blank.

Answer: (one word)
Question 5 of 10
5. "Futility" describes the death of a comrade-in-arms, far from home. What question does Owen ask in the end? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. A very unusual poem is the one which starts like this: "She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms / Out of the stillness of her palace wall / Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms". What is it called? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. "Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm / Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse / Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse / Huge imprecations like a blasting charm! / Reach at that arrogance which needs thy harm / And beat it down before its sins grow worse." This powerful incantation is the beginning of which poem?
Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. In which poem dows Owen recount the story of Abraham and Isaac, but with a different ending? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. An almost funny poem is "The Letter". It is the letter of a soldier to his wife, but includes comments in brackets, indicating what is going on while the letter is being written. When the soldier writing the letter is hit, he asks a comrade to finsh the letter for him. What is that comrade's name? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Owen's masterpiece is without any doubt "Strange Meeting". It follows an English soldier who fell and, beyond life, encounters another dead soldier. They see what they have in common - untimely death, shattered dreams, unfulfilled hopes. Only then do they realize that they once were enemies, and that the other soldier is a German who was killed by the protagonist yesterday. What is the last line of this poem? Hint



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Most Recent Scores
Mar 27 2024 : Guest 157: 1/10
Mar 22 2024 : Guest 157: 3/10
Feb 28 2024 : Guest 47: 2/10
Feb 14 2024 : jogreen: 1/10

Score Distribution

quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Here is what Owen once said about his poetry. Complete the quote: "I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity. (...) All a poet can do today is____"

Answer: warn

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Shropshire. He worked in the parish and later taught English in Bordeaux. When the war began, Owen volunteered to fight. He was injured in 1917 and spent some time in the hospital, where he met Siegfried Sassoon (who would later publish his poems).

In the summer of 1918 he returned to the front (again, voluntarily) and fell on November 4, 1918, aged 25, just a few days before Armistice. The quote I asked you to complete was used by composer Benjamin Britten as a sort of heading for his "War Requiem". Britten also included seven of Owen's poems. Take my quiz about the Requiem to find out more about it :)
2. What is the poem I'm quoting this from called: "I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears / And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts / And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts / And rusted every bayonet with His tears..."?

Answer: Soldier's Dream

"And there were no more bombs, of ours or theirs / Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel / But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael / And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs."
3. "Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed / But may thy heart-beat kiss it night and day / Until the name grow vague and wear away." What object is being referred to?

Answer: Identity Disk

From "With An Identity Disk".
4. One of Owen's most impressive poems is "Dulce And Decorum Est," where he describes what war is like, and, after saying something along the lines of "If you had seen what I have seen", ends with the cynical lines: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory / The old ______: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori." Fill in the blank.

Answer: Lie

The poem describes the progress of a weary, outworn group of soldiers ("Bent double, like old beggars under sacks...") which gets attacked and loses one of their own. Owen ends by addressing the reader, saying that if they had seen this, too, then no one would tell "the old Lie" any more: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori".

The Latin, originally a quote from Roman poet Horace's "Odes", translates as "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country" and has become quite famous, especially in 19th century Europe.
5. "Futility" describes the death of a comrade-in-arms, far from home. What question does Owen ask in the end?

Answer: whether the earth had better been left asleep forever

"Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break Earth's sleep at all?" The poet wonders, too, whether anything can wake the soldier up again, but concedes that only "the kind old sun will know".
This poem is one of my favorites. It is one of the seven poems Britten used in the "War Requiem".
6. A very unusual poem is the one which starts like this: "She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms / Out of the stillness of her palace wall / Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms". What is it called?

Answer: The Kind Ghosts

"The Kind Ghosts" is a wonderful poem: full of atmosphere, and unusually conciliatory. It tells of a (nameless) woman who lives in a palace haunted by the ghosts of the fallen, but she is unaware of their presence. Those ghosts never show themselves and don't wander about - "Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all."
This one, too, was used by Britten, but not in the "War Requiem". Britten included it in his "Nocturne".
7. "Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm / Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse / Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse / Huge imprecations like a blasting charm! / Reach at that arrogance which needs thy harm / And beat it down before its sins grow worse." This powerful incantation is the beginning of which poem?

Answer: Sonnet On Seeing A Piece Of Our Heavy Artillery Brought Into Action

Also included in the "War Requiem", but in adapted form. In the beginning, it reads like an enthusiastic killing frenzy, but the last lines revoke this impression: "But when thy spell be cast complete and whole / May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!"
8. In which poem dows Owen recount the story of Abraham and Isaac, but with a different ending?

Answer: The Parable of the Old Men and the Young

This poem tells of Abraham, and how he was told to sacrifice his own son. So he prepares everything and makes as to slay his son, when an angel appears and tells him to stop and offer a ram instead. So far so good. But in Owen's story, it all turns out differently: "But the old man would not so, and slew his son / And half the seed of Europe, one by one." Owen accuses the heads of state, who send the children of their own countries out to war and literally sacrifice them.
This poem was also included in the "War Requiem".
9. An almost funny poem is "The Letter". It is the letter of a soldier to his wife, but includes comments in brackets, indicating what is going on while the letter is being written. When the soldier writing the letter is hit, he asks a comrade to finsh the letter for him. What is that comrade's name?

Answer: Jim

"(...No, damn your iodine. Jim? 'Ere! / Write my old girl, Jim, there's a dear.)"
10. Owen's masterpiece is without any doubt "Strange Meeting". It follows an English soldier who fell and, beyond life, encounters another dead soldier. They see what they have in common - untimely death, shattered dreams, unfulfilled hopes. Only then do they realize that they once were enemies, and that the other soldier is a German who was killed by the protagonist yesterday. What is the last line of this poem?

Answer: "Let us sleep now..."

I've hardly ever read a more impressive poem. I'll put it here below this, so if I got anyone interested in it, you can go and read it here. "Strange Meeting" is the last of the seven poems in Britten's "War Requiem".
Thanks for playing, and now read "Strange Meeting" if you want to.

STRANGE MEETING
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up and stared
with piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall -
by his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
and no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."

"None," said the other, "save the undone years,
the hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
was my life also. I went hunting wild
after the wildest beauty in the world,
which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
but mocks the steady running of the hour,
and if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
and of my weeping something had been left,
which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
the pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
to miss the march of this retreating world
into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
but not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

"I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned
yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now..."
Source: Author PearlQ19

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