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Quiz about It Was the Best of Rhymes
Quiz about It Was the Best of Rhymes

It Was the Best of Rhymes Trivia Quiz


For the first task of the Leg #2 of the Amazing Race, on behalf of the Last Ones In I present you some of my favourite English-language poems. Can you match the lines to the poems they belong to and their authors?

A matching quiz by LadyNym. Estimated time: 5 mins.
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Author
LadyNym
Time
5 mins
Type
Match Quiz
Quiz #
386,096
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
8 / 10
Plays
1827
Awards
Top 20% Quiz
Last 3 plays: GoodwinPD (10/10), dellastreet (10/10), turaguy (8/10).
(a) Drag-and-drop from the right to the left, or (b) click on a right side answer box and then on a left side box to move it.
QuestionsChoices
1. "Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung"  
  Ted Hughes, "Hawk Roosting"
2. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer"  
  Thomas Stearns Eliot, "The Waste Land"
3. "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land"  
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
4. "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as if of hemlock I had drunk"  
  Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"
5. "I met a traveller from an ancient land / Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert..."  
  John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
6. "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning"  
  Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"
7. "In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?"  
  Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty"
8. "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone"  
  W.H. Auden, "Funeral Blues"
9. "Glory be to God for dappled things / For skies of couple-colour like a brinded cow"  
  William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
10. "There is no sophistry in my body / My manners are tearing off heads"  
  William Blake, "The Tyger"





Select each answer

1. "Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung"
2. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer"
3. "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land"
4. "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as if of hemlock I had drunk"
5. "I met a traveller from an ancient land / Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert..."
6. "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning"
7. "In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?"
8. "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone"
9. "Glory be to God for dappled things / For skies of couple-colour like a brinded cow"
10. "There is no sophistry in my body / My manners are tearing off heads"

Most Recent Scores
Mar 18 2024 : GoodwinPD: 10/10
Mar 17 2024 : dellastreet: 10/10
Mar 15 2024 : turaguy: 8/10
Feb 19 2024 : matthewpokemon: 10/10
Feb 16 2024 : ArlingtonVA: 8/10
Feb 09 2024 : Guest 82: 8/10
Feb 04 2024 : Guest 166: 4/10
Feb 04 2024 : Guest 143: 4/10

Score Distribution

quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung"

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", first published in 1798 as part of "Lyrical Ballads" - the volume of ground-breaking Romantic poetry by Coleridge and his friend William Wordsworth - is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and probably in the history of Western literature.

As such, it has inspired great art (Gustave Doré's illustrations), music (a 13-minute epic song by Iron Maiden) and other literary works. These lines are found at the end of Part II, when things start getting difficult for the ship and its crew after the Mariner's sacrilegious act of shooting an albatross, a bird of good omen.
2. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer"

Answer: William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Written in 1919 and published in 1921, in the aftermath of WWI, when unrest was already spreading again throughout Europe, "The Second Coming" is one of W.B. Yeats' best-known works. It is filled with powerful imagery taken from Christian tradition, which perfectly captures the state of moral uncertainty, intolerance and lurking violence that would lead the world to another global war less than two decades later.

The quote "things fall apart" has been used in many other later works, such as Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel of the same title.
3. "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land"

Answer: Thomas Stearns Eliot, "The Waste Land"

These are the opening lines of T.S. Eliot's five-part poem "The Waste Land", published in 1922. Loosely based on the medieval legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King, and packed with references to both Western and Eastern culture, "The Waste Land" is considered one of the central works of modernist poetry. Though it is undeniably obscure and makes for difficult reading, its imagery and language (shifting from satire to an almost prophetic tone) are striking and deeply fascinating.
4. "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as if of hemlock I had drunk"

Answer: John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"

John Keats wrote this poem in the spring of 1819, in a garden near his house in Hampstead (London), where a nightingale had built its nest. The bird's lovely song inspired him to write this composition, one of his most famous works, which explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality.

The latter topic was quite relevant to the poet's own experience, as he suffered from tuberculosis and died in Rome only two years later, at the young age of 25.
5. "I met a traveller from an ancient land / Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert..."

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"

Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet "Ozymandias" (first published in 1818) is a reflection on the ravages of time and the ephemeral nature of human power and glory - represented by the crumbling statue of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II (Ozymandias was his Greek name).

Shelley was inspired to write his poem by the British Museum's acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of the pharaoh, dating from the 13th century BC.
6. "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning"

Answer: Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"

Taking its title from a quote by Latin poet Horace (meaning "it is a sweet and honourable thing") "Dulce et Decorum Est" - written in October 1917, and published posthumously in 1920 - describes a gas attack against a group of British soldiers during WWI.

The effects of the gas on a soldier who is unable to put on his mask in time are conveyed by deeply disturbing imagery, and the poem ends by calling the original Latin quote ("dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", it is sweet and honourable to die for one's own country) a lie, in a powerful condemnation of war. Wilfred Owen, one of the English war poets, was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a few days before the armistice that put an end to the war.
7. "In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?"

Answer: William Blake, "The Tyger"

Included in William Blake's "Songs of Experience" (1794), "The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" in "Songs of Innocence" (1786). Using striking imagery, the poet contrasts beauty and ferocity, and wonders about the contrary nature of things and the duality of creation. Like some of the poems mentioned in this quiz, "The Tyger" has inspired a number of later works in various artistic field, and has been called the most anthologized poem in English literature.
8. "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone"

Answer: W.H. Auden, "Funeral Blues"

Also known as "Stop All the Clocks", W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" was published in two versions. The first version, of five stanzas, was written and published in 1936, and was meant as a satirical mourning piece for a political leader: the second (one stanza shorter) was written in 1938 to be sung by soprano Hedli Anderson in a setting by composer Benjamin Britten.

The poem became known to a wider audience after being featured in the poignant funeral scene of the 1994 British film "Four Weddings and a Funeral".
9. "Glory be to God for dappled things / For skies of couple-colour like a brinded cow"

Answer: Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty"

"Pied Beauty" was written in 1877 by English poet and Catholic priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) in the curtal sonnet (11 lines instead of 14) form invented by the poet himself. Through vivid imagery and his skillful use of sprung rhythm, Hopkins praises the varied beauty of nature and, at the same time, emphasizes God's immutability.
10. "There is no sophistry in my body / My manners are tearing off heads"

Answer: Ted Hughes, "Hawk Roosting"

Included in Ted Hughes' 1960 collection "Lupercal", "Hawk Roosting", like most other poems in the collection, presents a powerful image from nature - a predatory bird depicted as an amoral tyrant before which all other creatures have to bow. The poem has also been interpreted as an allegory of the dangers of excessive patriotism. Hughes (1930-1998), known for his short-lived marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984.
Source: Author LadyNym

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