Poetry for All Seasons Online Quiz | Poetry

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. According to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to __ __ __.' Which of the following phrases completes that quotation?

Answer: thoughts of love

The quotation is taken from a long poem entitled 'Locksley Hall'.

Tennyson was one of Britain's Poets Laureate. He was appointed to the post by Queen Victoria in 1850. Probably his best-remembered poem is 'The Charge of The Light Brigade'.

2. Can you find the missing word in this excerpt from a poem by Thomas Nashe? 'Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant ___.'

Answer: king

This little extract is the first line of a lyrical poem in three verses. It is taken from the only play which Nashe wrote, entitled 'Summer's Last Will and Testament'. In this Elizabethan comedy the four seasons are personified.

3. In one of his sonnets, Shakespeare wondered if he should compare his loved-one to a summer's day and, after several lines of comparison, went on to write, 'But thy eternal summer shall not ___.' What word has been left out at the end of that quotation?

Answer: fade

This is one of Shakespeare's more-famous sonnets. For those of you who don't know it, here are the fourteen lines of this lovely piece of romantic poetry.

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of the fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

4. You might need the children to help you with this one. According to a nursery rhyme, one summer's day the Queen of Hearts made some tarts. She must have been very cross when they were stolen. Do you know who the thief was?

Answer: the Knave of Hearts

All ended well - as you can tell from the last part of the rhyme:

'The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer's day:
The Knave of Hearts he stole the tarts and took them clean away.
The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the Knave full sore.
The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts and vowed he'd steal no more.'

Lewis Carroll used this famous little rhyme in his book, 'Alice in Wonderland'.

5. This extract, in praise of summer, is taken from a 13th century poem. Do you know who wrote it? 'Sumer is icumen in; Lhude sing cuccu. Groweth sed and bloweth med And springeth the wude nu.'

Answer: The poet is unknown.

This ebullient and joyful little poem is one of the very few pieces of very early Middle-English lyrical poetry which has come down to us. This type of poetry did not reach its full flowering until the age of Chaucer in the second half of the 14th. century.

Edmund Spenser wrote in the 16th century and is mainly remembered for 'The Faerie Queen'. Nicholas de Guildford of Dorset is thought to have written an allegorical poem called 'The Owl and the Nightingale' which dates from the beginning of the 13th. century.

6. Which very well-known 19th century poet wrote an ode to autumn which begins with these words? 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun. Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.'

Answer: John Keats

For those of you who aren't familiar with this poem, or have forgotten it, here is the rest of the first verse:

'To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.'

7. There is a word missing from the following extract from a poem by Thomas Hood. Can you find the correct, missing word? 'I saw old Autumn in the misty ___ Stand shadowless like Silence listening To silence.'

Answer: morn

Thomas Hood (1789-1845) was a humorist and satirist as well as being a poet. I found some quotations of his to share with you.

'Oh God! that bread should be so dear!
And flesh and blood so cheap!'

'Never go to France - unless you know the lingo.
If you do, like me, you will repent by jingo.'

'The best of friends fall out, and so his teeth had done some years ago.'

8. This extract is from 'The Song of Solomon' (in the King James Version of the Bible). A lover calls to his beloved to enjoy the pleasures of the springtime with him. Which word have I left out? 'Rise up, my love , my ___ one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.'

Answer: fair

You can find these words in the second chapter of 'The Song of Solomon'.
Like all poetry, this extract, and indeed the whole song, needs to be read aloud for its lovely, lilting poetry to be fully appreciated.

9. William Shakespeare is remembered mainly for his plays and sonnets, but he also wrote other poems. He must have been feeling a bit out-of-sorts when he wrote a poem called 'Bitter Song'. Here are the first three lines: 'Blow, ___, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude.' What word is missing from this quotation?

Answer: blow

This is a poem of two verses. The first verse continues as follows:

'Thy tooth is not so keen
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.'

10. 'Ode to the West Wind' was written by a very well-known nineteenth century poet. It's a long poem which ends with the following, rhyming couplet. 'The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, If Winter comes can Spring be far behind?' Can you name the poet who wrote this ode?

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Most people, doubtless, will remember Shelley more for such poems as 'To a Skylark' and 'Ozymandias'. He was the husband of Mary Shelley who wrote 'Frankenstein' (or 'The Modern Prometheus').

Source: Author Jomarion

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Poetry for All Seasons Trivia Quiz

Here is a quiz to test your knowledge of the year's four seasons in poetry. I think the poets and quotations I've picked are well-known.

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