Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "The world is waiting. Justice hides her beam,
And plants her sword within the sluggish ground;
And human fancies in divided stream
Emit a dubious sound."
The poem's title is in reference to a region that was Western Europe during the Iron Age and covered an area of 190,800 miČ.
This verse is from what poem?
2. "So tender was the harmony,
My heart grew still, my soul was stirred
To catch the faintest sound or word.
Then slow and solemn grew the strain;
Then mirth and merriment again
Touched Music's sides to comic laughter,
And rare, strange sounds came bubbling after."
That's a verse near the beginning. What's the first line of the poem?
3. This next poem is called "Our River", a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. My favorite two verses of the poem are:
"We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory
We know that Arno's banks are fair,
And Rhine has castled shadows,
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
Go singing down their meadows.
But while, unpictured and unsung
By painter or by poet,
Our river waits the tuneful tongue
And cunning hand to show it,-
We only know the fond skies lean
Above it, warm with blessing,
And the sweet soul of our Undine
Awakes to our caressing."
Lovely. What does the caption say before the first line of the poem?
4. Paul Hamilton Hayne wrote a poem about the death of a young girl from Jacksonville, Florida circa 1880s. Two of the verses toward the end have always stood out to me:
"Is it an angel's voice that throbs
Within the brown bird's breast,
Whose rhythmic magic soars or Bobs
Above our darling's rest?
The fancy passed-but came once more
When, stolen from Jeannie's bed,
That eve, along the porch way floor
I found our minstrel-dead!"
What poem do these verses come from?
5. "I see the white sails on the main, I see, on all the strands,
Old Europe's exiled households crowd, and toil's outnumbered hands-
From Hessenland and Frankenland, from Danube, Drave, and Rhine,
From Netherland, my sea-born land, and the Norse-man's hills of pine,
From Thames, and Shannon, and their isles-and never, sure, before,
Invading host such greeting found upon a stranger shore."
Not really a poem, more of a song, called "Hendrik's Prophecy" written by whom?
6. "Sweet music, lend thyself unto my dream,
Low, melting tones and faint, shrill cries,
Now thrilling as the voice of love,
Now weak as some small wave that breaks and dies
There at our feet. . . .
My very soul seems to take wing and rise,
As, stirred by all these subtle harmonies,
First I am fain to laugh with happiness,
And then most tender tears spring to my eyes,
Strange, long quiet feelings stir and move."
What's the name of the poem this verse comes from?
7. "You walk the sunny side of Fate;
The wise world smiles, and calls you great;
The golden fruitage of success
Drops at your feet in plenteousness;
And you have blessings manifold,-
Renown and power, and friends and gold.
They build a wall between us twain
Which may not be thrown down again.
Alas! for I, the long years through,
Have loved you better than you knew."
This verse is from a poem called "Left Behind" by Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen. She starting writing at 15 and in 1855 published her first work under what pseudonym?
8. Joel Benton, best known for writing "Emerson as a Poet (1883)" wrote this first verse in 1857:
"EMPYREAL wanderer, dweller in the skies, Fairest of the divine Atlantides,
Swimmer in the blue oceans of the air,
What bright Calypso of our earthly seas
Shall dare to match thy subtle harmonies,
Or with thy splendors, golden-winged, compare?
Thy throne is high, beyond this earths emprise,
No mortal here thy sapphire crown could wear,
The bright blue ether is thy empery,
Thou rulest supreme without a rival there."
This poem is an Ode to what?
9. This is the last verse of a poem called "Charles Sumner":
"Oh friend beloved, with longing, tear-filled eyes
We look up, up to the unclouded blue,
And seek in vain some answering sign from thee.
Look down upon us, guide and cheer us still
From the serene height where thou dwellest now;
Dark is the way without the beacon light
Which long and steadfastly thy hand upheld.
Oh, nerve with courage new the stricken hearts
Whose dearest hopes seem lost in losing thee."
Who wrote it?
10. From the poem "Scarlet Hibiscus", the beginning verse starts:
"THOU bloomst, at last-fair stranger, from the isle
Of Santa Cruz ! Like gorgeous sunset oer
The mountain-tops, thou spreadst thy blood-red leaves,
Enamored of the sun, that to these hills,
Far in the north, hath followed his beloved,
Thy face with bridal blushes is suffused.
His smiles and kisses fill thy tender leaves With color, and thy heart with perfect joy."
Who is the writer of these lines?
Source: Author
Nammage
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
agony before going online.
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