Poetry in Code Trivia Quiz

Answer: Dreams

The code for questions 1 to 5 is: A=8, B=3, C=10, D=13, E=21, F=17, G=24, H=5, I=14, K=18, L=7, M=20, N=2, O=6, R=11, S=16, T=25, W=15, Y=12

Answer: Bird

The lines encoded are:

Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Answer: 16

This poem in full is:

Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

By Langston Hughes

Answer: Life

James Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Jopin, Missouri, USA. He was raised by his grandmother, due to his parents divorce, until he was 13 years old and then went to live with his mother. His first book of poetry "The Weary Blues" was published in 1926 and he his first novel "Not Without Laughter" (1930) won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

Answer: James

"Dreams" was printed in "The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes" (1994).

Answer: I am

The code for questions 6 to 10 is: A=3, C=23, D=9, E=26, F=12, G=18, H=4, I=2, J=7, K=22, L=25, M=1, N=16, O=5, R=10, S=8, T=15, V=20, W=24

Answer: John Clare

The encoded lines from the poem are as follows:

I Am
John Clare
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
Into the living sea of waking dreams

Answer: scorn

This poem in full is:

I Am!
I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best-
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the
vaulted sky.

by John Clare

Answer: C

This poem was written when John Clare was in the Northampton County Asylum. It was first printed in the "Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent of Saint Andrews" in 1864.

Answer: True

John Clare was born in England on 13th July, 1793 and died on 20th May, 1864. He was confined to the Northampton Lunatic Asylum from 1841 to 1864 but he suffered mental illness from 1835.