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Poetry by Theme Quizzes, Trivia and Puzzles
Poetry by Theme Quizzes, Trivia

Poetry by Theme Trivia

Poetry by Theme Trivia Quizzes

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Look here for quizzes bout such topics as flowers, animals, the weather - and, of course, love!
16 quizzes and 205 trivia questions.
1.
Location Location Location
  Location, Location, Location!   best quiz  
Photo Quiz
 10 Qns
So often it is that place provides the greatest inspiration to the human heart. Do you recognize these poems inspired by a particular place or location?
Average, 10 Qns, alaspooryoric, Dec 25 16
Average
alaspooryoric gold member
611 plays
2.
Poetic Animals
  Poetic Animals   great trivia quiz  
Photo Quiz
 10 Qns
'Macavity's not there', or so said T S Eliot in 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'. He's not the only poet to write about animals. Can you spot these poetic creatures?
Average, 10 Qns, rossian, Sep 05 17
Average
rossian editor
899 plays
3.
Dead Poets Society
  Dead Poets Society   popular trivia quiz  
Photo Quiz
 10 Qns
"All we are is dust in the wind", sings "Kansas", but that's not quite Robin Williams. He and many great authors instead advise "Seize the day!" Check out different poetic expressions of this. Best if you know and love poetry.
Average, 10 Qns, Godwit, Nov 06 18
Average
Godwit gold member
Nov 06 18
355 plays
4.
  I See the Moon... editor best quiz   best quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
...and the moon sees me". The moon has inspired our creativity for centuries, from the nursery rhyme mentioned in this quiz's title to the poems represented in the following questions. How many of these poems mentioning the moon do you recognize?
Average, 10 Qns, alaspooryoric, Feb 25 21
Average
alaspooryoric gold member
Feb 25 21
357 plays
5.
  Love, Poetically   great trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
One of the favourite topics for poets, there are many poems featuring love to choose from. Here are just ten of them for you to fall in love with.
Average, 10 Qns, rossian, Apr 07 19
Average
rossian editor
Apr 07 19
2085 plays
6.
  Spring's Eternal Hopes   best quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Yes, yes, we've all heard Alexander Pope's declaration: "Hope springs eternal in the human breast". However, joy doesn't have to come from breasts: it can spring from spring itself! Here follows a quiz of famous classical poems about spring!
Average, 10 Qns, alaspooryoric, Dec 25 16
Average
alaspooryoric gold member
464 plays
7.
  Write Me a Love Song   popular trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Sonnets are usually amorous poems, and Shakespeare wrote some of the most famous in the English language. Many other famous writers have had a go at the genre, too!
Average, 10 Qns, AcrylicInk, Dec 25 16
Average
AcrylicInk gold member
454 plays
8.
  Are You an Animal for Poetry?    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
The following quiz is a menagerie of poems praising everything from a curious cat to a cunning vixen. How many of these animal themed poems can you identify?
Easier, 10 Qns, dolano, Dec 25 16
Easier
dolano
1390 plays
9.
  Dark Encounter!    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This is a ghostly interlude. Do you travel by train? "Beware the shades of the haunted line, The wraiths of the silver track. They whisk you away where the sun can't shine- And never bring you back!" Identify the quotations in the text.
Average, 10 Qns, balaton, Dec 25 16
Average
balaton
190 plays
10.
  Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
The poetic lines quoted contain references to flowers, fruits or trees. Can you identify the poet?
Tough, 10 Qns, cristabel56, Aug 18 21
Tough
cristabel56
Aug 18 21
437 plays
trivia question Quick Question
'Ah, love, let us be true to one another!' appears in which Matthew Arnold poem, which ends 'where ignorant armies clash by night'?

From Quiz "Love, Poetically"




11.
  Love Poetry Part 1    
Multiple Choice
 25 Qns
This will be the first in a couple of quizzes (I'm hoping) on Love Poetry. What I'll do is name the title of the poem and you name the author. What makes this a little different is all the poetry is about love and romance. Have fun.
Tough, 25 Qns, AmandaLG, Dec 25 16
Tough
AmandaLG
505 plays
12.
  Poems of Tribute    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
These are some poems of tribute to some famous people.(If not actually "tribute", the poems at least include some reference to these people.)
Average, 10 Qns, robert362, Dec 25 16
Average
robert362
387 plays
13.
  People in Poetry    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Here's a collection of characters, some real and some fictional, who are named in various famous poems. Name the authors.
Tough, 10 Qns, robert362, Dec 25 16
Tough
robert362
724 plays
14.
  Poetry Places    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Match the poetry place or line that is mentioned with the poet who wrote about it.
Average, 10 Qns, robert362, Feb 19 21
Average
robert362
Feb 19 21
508 plays
15.
  Love Poetry part 3    
Multiple Choice
 25 Qns
Part 3 in the series all about Love Poems. I'll give you the title of the poem and you give me the poet. I hope you enjoy.
Tough, 25 Qns, AmandaLG, Dec 25 16
Tough
AmandaLG
410 plays
16.
  Love Poetry part 4    
Multiple Choice
 25 Qns
This is part four of the Love Poetry Series. I give you the title of the poem you give me the poet. I hope you enjoy it.
Difficult, 25 Qns, AmandaLG, Dec 25 16
Difficult
AmandaLG
340 plays
Related Topics
  Name the Poet [Literature] (32 quizzes)

  Poetic Quotes [Literature] (46 quizzes)

  Poetry [Literature] (166 quizzes)

  Poetry for Children [For Children] (13 quizzes)

  Poets [People] (15 quizzes)


Poetry by Theme Trivia Questions

1. "Bess, the landlord's daughter, the landlord's black-eyed daughter" shrank into a corner of the train compartment. In the poem by Alfred Noyes, what was the profession of Bess's lover?

From Quiz
Dark Encounter!

Answer: A highwayman

Alfred Noyes was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright, best known for his ballads "The Highwayman" and "The Barrel-Organ". "The Highwayman"mm tells the story of an unnamed highwayman who is in love with Bess, a landlord's daughter. Betrayed to the authorities by Tim, a jealous ostler, the highwayman escapes ambush when Bess sacrifices her life to warn him. Learning of her death, he dies in a futile attempt at revenge, shot down on the highway. In the final stanza, the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights. The poem makes effective use of vivid imagery for the background and of repetitious phrases to create the sense of a horseman riding at ease through the rural darkness to a lovers' tryst or of soldiers marching down the same road to ambush him.

2. Can you name this poem by English poet Thomas Gray? It has a domesticated feel about it; here is a line from the poem to help you out. "Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard,"

From Quiz Are You an Animal for Poetry?

Answer: Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) was a shy character who at one point declined the post of Poet Laureate. The poem "Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat" is a light-hearted poem about the drowning of a cat as it tries to hook a goldfish from a pond, and was written in memory of the death of his friend's cat, Selima.

3. Which poet wrote "A filbert hedge with wildbriar overtwined,/And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind"?

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: John Keats

From "I Stood Tip-Toe Upon a Little Hill" by John Keats 1795-1821. Keats was considered to be a key element in the Romantic Movement.

4. Walt Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain" as a tribute to what individual?

From Quiz Poems of Tribute

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Whitman was a contemporary of Lincoln's. The poem was written after Lincoln's assassination.

5. 'By the shore of Gitchie Gumee ...'

From Quiz Poetry Places

Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

'Song of Hiawatha'.

6. Which author wrote a classic poem that expressed 'sorrow for the lost Lenore'?

From Quiz People in Poetry

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

'Nameless here for evermore'. Poe, of course, in 'The Raven'. He also wrote about women named Annabel Lee, Annie, Helen, etc.

7. Who wrote 'She Walks in Beauty'?

From Quiz Love Poetry Part 1

Answer: Lord Byron

Lord Byron's full name was George Gordon Byron. He is considered by many to be the greatest letter writer of the English language. Some of his best known works are "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan".

8. John Donne wrote a sonnet about something that affects us all. According to him, what should 'be not proud'?

From Quiz Write Me a Love Song

Answer: Death

'Death, Be Not Proud' is from Donne's 'Holy Sonnets', published posthumously in 1633. The persona says that death isn't as mighty as people think. It's a slave to sickness, poison, and war. Death is nothing without its causes. John Donne is considered to be a metaphysical poet. They used metaphysical conceits, which are extended metaphors to explore a topic. Their poetry mainly focused on religion and love.

9. The "Night Mail" rattled relentlessly through the rolling darkness, hurling defiance at bridges and gates. Who is the author of the poem "Night Mail"?

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: W.H. Auden

"Night Mail" was written in 1936 to accompany the documentary film of the same year and the same title. The film concerned a London, Midland, and Scottish Railway (LMS) mail train travelling from London to Scotland. Auden's poem was read toward the end of the film, set to music by Benjamin Britten. The rhythm of the film matches the train's movement, and a reader can almost hear the train chugging along as it brings the letters to the people of England and Scotland.

10. William Butler Yeats created the lines 'tread softly, because you tread on my dreams' in which of his poems?

From Quiz Love, Poetically

Answer: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

All the options listed could be classed as love poems by Yeats. 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' describes how the writer would love to spread the richest cloths on the ground for his love to walk upon, but he is poor and can spread only his dreams for her. Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin, although his family moved to England only two years later. Yeats wrote the poem for Maude Gonne, with whom he fell in love, only to be rejected. Gonne inspired much of his poetry, possibly more than she would have done had she accepted his proposals of marriage.

11. Moving outdoors, we read a poem written by Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson. You may not have the stomach for this poem. What is its title? "She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple tart."

From Quiz Are You an Animal for Poetry?

Answer: The Cow

Did you know that Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was mainly raised by his nanny Alison Cunningham? Because of this, he dedicated his collection of poems "A Child's Garden of Verses" to her. The collection included the poem "The Cow".

12. Who wrote "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,/Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,"?

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: Thomas Gray

From "Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray 1716-1771. This poem was probably begun in 1742, following the death of his close friend Richard West, but it was not published until 1751.

13. "I weep for Adonais. He is dead." These lines were written about the death of what poet?

From Quiz Poems of Tribute

Answer: John Keats

The poem which contains these lines was written by fellow romantic poet, Percy Shelley.

14. 'Sophocles long ago heard it in the Aegean ...'

From Quiz Poetry Places

Answer: Matthew Arnold

'Dover Beach'. 'Ah, love, let us be true to one another ...'

15. Which author wrote 'To Althea, From Prison'?

From Quiz People in Poetry

Answer: Richard Lovelace

'Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage'.

16. The Spring and the Fall

From Quiz Love Poetry part 4

Answer: Edna ST. Vincent Millay

17. Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan

From Quiz Love Poetry part 3

Answer: John Gay

Actually this is a ballad he wrote. He is also a famous playwright. His best known play is the The Beggar's Opera. He is also famous for his Fables.

18. Who is the author of 'A Dedication to My Wife'?

From Quiz Love Poetry Part 1

Answer: T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

19. Sir Philip Sidney published the first original English language sonnet sequence. It explored the love between a man and a woman. What were their names?

From Quiz Write Me a Love Song

Answer: Astrophil and Stella

'Astrophil and Stella' was published posthumously in 1591, though it is thought that Sidney had been working on it since 1576. The work would probably not have been published before his death (he died of an infected gunshot wound in 1586) because the aristocracy did not write for money. Poetry was, however, circulated in manuscript form at Court. Many European sonnets were translated into English, but Sidney published the first ones to be originally written in English.

20. She gazed through the window at the ever darkening landscape. She could just make out "a cart run away in the road, Lumping along with man and load." The quotation is from "From a Railway Carriage". Who wrote it?

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), written for children but also popular with their parents, includes such favourites as "My Shadow" and "The Lamplighter".

21. Which Tudor era poet, and possible lover of Anne Boleyn, wrote 'A Renouncing of Love'?

From Quiz Love, Poetically

Answer: Sir Thomas Wyatt

'Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever; Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more' are the opening lines of the poem. Wyatt was a member of the court of Henry VIII, and wrote poems in praise of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, including 'Whoso List to Hunt'. Wyatt was arrested in 1536 and charged with having committed adultery with Anne. He was fortunate to escape with his head, thanks to friends in high places, notably Thomas Cromwell, who secured his release. Sir Philip Sidney was a poet from the Elizabethan era, and Masefield was born in 1878. Tennyson was a poet from the nineteenth century.

22. Which poet wrote these lines? "I went out to the hazel wood,/Because a fire was in my head,"

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: W.B. Yeats

From "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by W.B. Yeats 1865-1939. It is from the collection "The Wind Among the Reeds" published in 1899 when the poet's aim was to revive Irish folklore, legends and myths.

23. What poet was described in a poem (by James Lowell) as being "three fifths pure genius and two fifths pure fudge"?

From Quiz Poems of Tribute

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

"There's Poe with his raven like Barnaby Rudge". The poem ends with the observation that "the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind". (Poe was not pleased.)

24. Which author wrote about 'the beautiful lady without mercy'?

From Quiz People in Poetry

Answer: John Keats

'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'.

25. 'From Pamphilia to Amphilanthus' was an early 17th century sonnet sequence. What was unusual about it?

From Quiz Write Me a Love Song

Answer: It was written by a woman.

Lady Mary Wroth is one of few known writers of the era. 'From Pamphilia to Amphilanthus' consists of 103 sonnets published in 1621. Sonnets were out of fashion by the 17th century, so there is some speculation about why Lady Mary Wroth chose to write a sequence of them. She was related to Philip Sidney, so it could be an allusion to, or an ambition to achieve, his literary accomplishments. She also fell on hard times after her husband's death, and a scandal surrounding her illegitimate children, so she needed the money earned from selling her work.

26. Wanting to occupy herself, she began "plaiting a dark red love knot into her long black hair." In which poem did Bess do this?

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes

Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England, the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Aberystwyth, Wales, where his father taught Latin and Greek. The Welsh coast and mountains were an early inspiration to Noyes. In 1898, he left Aberystwyth for Exeter College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself at rowing, but failed to get his degree because, on a crucial day of his finals in 1902, he was meeting his publisher to arrange publication of his first volume of poems, The Loom of Years (1902). From 1903 to 1913, Noyes published five additional volumes of poetry, among them "The Flower of Old Japan" (1903) and "Poems" (1904), which included one of his most popular poems, "The Barrel-Organ". His most famous poem, "The Highwayman", was first published in the August 1906 issue of "Blackwood's Magazine", and included the following year in "Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems". In a nationwide poll conducted by the BBC in 1995 to find Britain's favourite poem, "The Highwayman" was voted the nation's 15th favourite poem.

27. The English poet Adrian Mitchell wrote a love poem named 'Calypso's Song to ___'. To which mythological hero was it addressed?

From Quiz Love, Poetically

Answer: Ulysses

In mythology, Calypso entranced Ulysses, or Odysseus, and held him for seven years, according to Homer's work 'Odyssey'. Mitchell's poem goes some way to explaining her hold on Ulysses, beginning 'My hands are tender feathers; They can teach your body to soar' and ending 'Lose yourself again; On the island of Calypso'. The lines in between you'll have to look up for yourself, as they would probably not pass the editing process. Adrian Mitchell was born in 1932 and began his career as a journalist, before turning to full time writing in the 1960s.

28. Which poet wrote the following lines? "Thou art more lovely and more temperate:/Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May"

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: William Shakespeare

From "Sonnet XVIII" by William Shakespeare 1564-1616. What is there to say about Shakespeare?

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