Romantic Times Trivia Quiz

Answer: William Wordsworth

"Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798" was written by William Wordsworth during a walking tour of the Welsh Borders in the company of his sister Dorothy, in the summer of 1798. Though the poem's lengthy title is usually shortened to "Tintern Abbey", the building in question - a ruined 12th-century Cistercian monastery - does not appear in the poem. Wordsworth had visited the area five years earlier, before the start of his collaboration with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge that led to the publication of the seminal collection "Lyrical Ballads" (1798), in which "Tintern Abbey" was eventually inserted as the concluding poem.

Consisting of 159 lines written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), "Tintern Abbey" is divided into three sections. The first part celebrates the beauty and quiet of the unspoiled landscape around the river Wye, while in the second part the poet reflects on the profound effect the scenery has had on him ever since his first visit in 1793, though at the time he was still too young and immature. The third and final section is dedicated to Dorothy, who has shared the experience with him and shares in his love for nature. "Tintern Abbey" has been called a summary of Wordsworth's philosophy of nature, with elements of pantheism.

Answer: William Wordsworth

Written in the form of a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" was actually composed over a month earlier, on 31 July 1802, as Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were travelling to Dover. Dorothy's impressions, recorded in her "Grasmere Journal", mirror the description of the city contained in the poem - in particular the purity of the sunlight and the absence of the cloud of smoke that characterized London for much of the 19th and 20th century. Both the poet and his sister draw a comparison between the grandeur of this man-made spectacle and the beauty of the natural landscapes so often celebrated in Wordsworth's poetry.

Noted for its simple yet highly effective language, the sonnet makes use of the poetic device of personification in its depiction of the city, which is represented as wearing the beauty of the morning "like a garment", with its houses that "seem asleep", and its "mighty heart [...] lying still". Though harshly criticized when first published in the collection "Poems in Two Volumes" (1807), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" has become one of Wordsworth's most enduringly popular poems.

Answer: William Wordsworth

Better known as "Daffodils", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was written in 1804, and first published in 1807 in the collection "Poems, in Two Volumes". The poem, now widely regarded as a classic (in spite of the poor critical reception of the collection at that time), was inspired by a walk that William Wordsworth took on 15 April 1802 with his younger sister Dorothy. The poet, who at the time was living in Grasmere, in England's Lake District, saw a "long belt" of bright yellow daffodils along the shore of Ullswater, the second-largest lake in the region. The original version of the poem was revised in 1815.

The poem consists of four, rhymed six-line stanzas; the second stanza was added in 1815, while the last was not modified at all. The first two stanzas describe the scene, using personification to depict the multitude of flowers swaying in the wind: the daffodils are "a crowd" and "a host", they "are dancing" in the breeze while tossing "their heads". In the third and especially the fourth stanza, Wordsworth reflects on the "wealth" brought to him by that beautiful natural scene, illustrating the concept of "emotion recollected in tranquillity" previously exposed in "Lyrical Ballads", in particular in "Tintern Abbey".

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Written in February 1798, "Frost at Midnight" is one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "conversation poems", a group of poems composed between 1795 and 1897, each of which is based on a particular life experience. The title of this grouping, devised by some 20th-century literary critics, refers to the conversational language employed by Coleridge when discussing lofty topics such as humankind's place in the universe and their relationship with nature and God. After its initial publication in 1798, "Frost at Midnight" was rewritten a number of times, and later published as part of the collection "Sibylline Leaves" (1817).

Written in blank verse, the poem combines recollections of the poet's own lonely childhood with his musings while sitting beside his sleeping infant son. Coleridge hopes that his "babe so beautiful" will be spared his negative experiences, and will grow up as a true child of nature, enjoying the beauty of the countryside so poignantly evoked in the poem's last two stanzas. At the time, Coleridge had become very close to William Wordsworth, whose input was essential for the description of the Lake District in the third stanza.

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Along with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", "Kubla Khan" is the best-known and most popular of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic works. Its fame rests not only on its powerful, vivid imagery, but also on the rather peculiar circumstances of its composition. Subtitled "A Vision in a Dream", the poem was written in 1797, inspired by a dream the poet had under the influence of opium (which he took for several ailments). Before falling asleep, he had been reading about Shangdu (Xanadu), the summer capital of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor who founded the Yuan dynasty. That description was very likely based on Marco Polo's account of Kublai Khan's summer palace. Coleridge started writing as soon as he woke up, but was interrupted by a person "on business from Porlock" - which caused him to forget the lines he needed to complete the poem. "Kubla Khan" was left unfinished, and only published in 1816 along with "Christabel" and "The Pains of Sleep".

Much has been written about "Kubla Khan" since it was first published over 200 years ago. The 54 lines Coleridge managed to write (out of the 200 or 300 he had planned) are divided in two stanzas that are irregular in length, metre and structure. There is a strong break between line 36 (the end of the first stanza) and the beginning of the second stanza, where the past tense shifts to the present, and the third-person narration about Kubla Khan and his pleasure palace turns to the first person. In that final part of the fragment, Coleridge depicts the nature of poetic imagination through striking, mystical images - the poet being someone who has fed on "honey-dew" and "drunk the milk of Paradise".

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is known to most as the author of the long, narrative ballad "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", written in 1797-1798. In the same period, he started writing another long ballad, "Christabel", also with a medieval setting and a strong supernatural element, but this time mainly focused on female characters. The poem, however, was never completed: of the five parts that Coleridge had planned, only the first two were published in 1816. The titular character of this Gothic tale is an innocent young woman, the daughter of Sir Leoline, who one day in the forest meets the beautiful, mysterious Geraldine. Though the lady claims to be a noblewoman who has been abducted by bandits, Christabel soon realizes something is wrong. In fact, the story hints at Geraldine being a vampire: unfortunately, Sir Leoline falls under her spell.

Despite its unfinished state, "Christabel" is regarded as one of Coleridge's finest works, both for its narrative structure and its use of language and rhythm. The poem is noteworthy for Coleridge's choice of an accentual metrical system: most lines have four accents (stresses), regardless of the number of syllables. In terms of content, "Christabel" was a major influence on Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Sleeper" (1831) and very probably also on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella "Carmilla" (1872), a well-known vampire tale with a not-so-subtle lesbian subtext.

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley began to write the sonnet "Ozymandias" at the end of 1817. During the Christmas season, Shelley and his friend Horace Smith participated in a sonnet-writing competition, both of them choosing to write on the subject of the River Nile. Both sonnets were titled "Ozymandias", the Greek name for Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, and were based on a passage from Greek historian Diodorus Siculus that described a huge statue of the pharaoh and the inscription on its pedestal. Shelley's poem was published in the weekly paper "The Examiner" on 11 January 1818, under the pen name Glirastes ("lover of dormice" - dormouse being his pet name for his wife, Mary, the author of "Frankenstein"). Smith's poem was published a few weeks later.

"Ozymandias" is technically an Italian sonnet, though its rhyme scheme is unorthodox: in fact, the octave and the sextet are connected by rhyme ("things" and "Kings"), which is against the rules. One of the most iconic and most frequently anthologized poems in the English language, it is a short but haunting reflection on the impermanence of human works and the inevitable fall of even the most powerful people. "Ozymandias" is also unusual for the presence of four different narrative voices in such a short poem: the narrating "I", the traveller that describes the statue, the sculptor, and the pharaoh himself, whose arrogant words are inscribed on the pedestal.

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "Ode to the West Wind" in the autumn of 1819 while walking in the Cascine wood in Florence. The poet and his wife, Mary, had moved to Italy in March 1818 and lived in various parts of the country, but had been beset by family tragedies (in particular the death of two children), health issues and other troubles. The poem was then published in 1820 in the collection "Prometheus Unbound with Other Poems". it is now regarded as one of Shelley's undisputed masterpieces, summing up his ideas about the role of the poet in society through powerful imagery.

In classical tradition, the ode was a poem meant to be recited or sung on important occasions in praise of an individual or event. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", on the other hand, adopts the form to express various intellectual, emotional and spiritual concerns. The West Wind is a powerful agent of change, ushering the metaphorical "death" of the year that will ultimately make way for the renewal of spring. As a homage to Florence's most famous native son, Dante Alighieri, Shelley chose the verse form of the "terza rima" for his poem's five "cantos". Each of these sections consists of four tercets and a rhyming couplet. The first three sections describe the effects of the wind on earth, air and sea, while in the last two the poet addresses the wind directly, asking it to take him along in its wanderings - sparing him the pain and sorrow inflicted on him by life. At the end, the poet wishes he could become the wind's spokesperson, spreading its message of change to "unawakened earth".

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Like "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark" was inspired by a walk in the Italian countryside - in this case near Livorno, on the Tuscan coast, where Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary had been spending some time in the summer of 1820. During an evening walk, the couple heard a skylark sing among the trees, as Mary recorded in her diary. Completed in late June, the poem was published a few months later together with Shelley's verse drama "Prometheus Unbound". Shelley would die tragically, drowned in a boating accident in the Gulf of Lerici, in Liguria, less than two years later - at the age of 29.

Written in the form of an ode - a poem composed in praise of an individual or event - "To a Skylark" has 105 lines arranged in five-line stanzas. Each stanza's unconventional meter - four shorter lines with three stresses each, followed by a fifth line with twice the number of stresses - creates variation, and evokes the natural rhythm of the bird's song. Though in nature a small, brown bird, the skylark here takes almost epic proportions - becoming an incarnation of nature's power and beauty, to whose many aspects it is compared. The bird is also depicted as a symbol of pure joy, untainted by the negative emotions that blight human existence.

Answer: John Keats

John Keats wrote the ballad "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" in 1819, shortly after his fateful meeting with Fanny Brawne, and before he started composing his famous odes. The poem's title, translated in English as "The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy", comes from the title of a 15th-century poem on courtly love by French poet Alain Chartier. Keats' main reference for the use of the ballad form was the 1798 collection "Lyrical Ballads" by William Wordsworth, which had popularized this medieval form of poetry, with its origins in oral tradition. The poem was first published in May 1820 in the weekly periodical "The Indicator" - less than one year before Keats' untimely death.

Written in a variation of the traditional ballad metre, with quatrains alternating tetrameters and trimeters that create a characteristic singsong rhythm, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" consists of 12 stanzas. The first three are structured as a dialogue between a knight and an unnamed person who meets him on the shores of a lake on a bleak winter day. In the remaining nine stanzas, the knight details his encounter with a mysterious lady of otherwordly beauty, who seduces him and later abandons him "on the cold hill's side" - condemning him to a sort of life-in-death. The knight's pale, haggard appearance has been interpreted as a mirror image of the poet, who was not in the best of health, and eventually died of tuberculosis. Inspired by a number of medieval legends of men kidnapped by fairies, and heavily hinting at the dualism of erotic love and death, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" has been credited with introducing the figure of the "femme fatale" that would become central to the culture of the turn of the 20th century.

Answer: John Keats

One of John Keats' famous "six odes" - a group of poems written in 1819 that are now widely regarded as some of his finest works - "Ode to a Nightingale" was composed in the garden of Wentworth Place, the poet's house in Hampstead, London (now a museum). According to his close friend Charles Armitage Brown, who owned the house, in the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built a nest on a nearby tree. Inspired by the birds's melodious song, Keats wrote the poem in one day; it was published in July of the same year in the periodical "Annals of the Fine Arts".

Though superficially similar to Shelley's "To a Skylark" - another Romantic masterpiece inspired by a bird's song - "Ode to a Nightingale" is a rather different poem: not so much a hymn of praise to life and nature, but a trance-like experience that borders on death. References to drugs, oblivion and death are particularly rife in the first ("hemlock", "dull opiate", "Lethe-wards) and the sixth of the poem's eight stanzas. Keats' sumptuous language appeals to the senses, evoking images of the lushness of a wood in late spring and the rich, heady scent of flowers - intensified by the poet's skillful use of sound patterns. The stanza form employed by Keats combines elements of the Italian and the Shakespearean sonnet, though each stanza counts ten lines rather than fourteen.

Answer: John Keats

"To Autumn" is the last of the six great odes that John Keats wrote in 1819. As its title implies, it was composed on 19 September, inspired by a walk (which he later described in a letter to a friend) the poet took in the evening of that day along the River Itchen in Winchester. The poem was published in 1820 in a volume that also included the narrative poems "Lamia" and "The Eve of St Agnes", also written in 1819, the most productive year in Keats' career. "To Autumn" was also to be the last of his poetic works, as he was beset by financial problems and needed to earn money. Sadly, in early 1820 he became ill with tuberculosis (which had already killed his brother Tom), and passed away in Rome on 23 February 1821.

"To Autumn" is somewhat shorter than Keats' other great odes, consisting of three stanzas of eleven lines each, written in iambic pentameter with a distinctive rhyme scheme (there is a rhyming couplet before the final line). Each stanza focuses on a different aspect of autumn: the first describes the fruitfulness of the season's early days, the second the time of the harvest, while in the third stanza the wistful music of autumn heralds the arrival of winter. Keats' trademark sensuous language is employed to great effect here, in a riot of images that emphasize growth, weariness and rest, and the gentle though mournful sounds of the dying year.