Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Alfred Tennyson's first publication was a volume that also contained poems by Charles Tennyson. What was this 1827 collection titled?
2. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal by what university for his poem "Timbuctoo"?
3. What masterpiece did Tennyson write upon the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam?
4. "Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The ____ sleepeth...."
What word is missing from this blank?
5. What poem about a woman who bemoans her social isolation begins, "With blackest moss the flower-plots / Were thickly crusted, one and all: / The rusted nails fell from the knots / That held the pear to the gable-wall"?
6. What lyrical ballad by Tennyson tells the story of Elaine of Astolat, a young noblewoman who was imprisoned on an island near Camelot?
7. What Tennyson poem involves a narrator who pauses by his childhood home, where he struggles with his emotions over having been abandoned by his childhood sweetheart? It begins, "Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn: / Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn."
8. What Tennyson poem begins in Ithaca, with the narrator saying, "It little profits that an idle king, / By this still hearth, among these barren crags, / Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race, / That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me."
9. Tennyson's poem "The Princess" inspired a comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. What was this opera called?
10. What Tennyson poem depicts a group of sailors who, upon consuming a particular plant, enter an altered state and become isolated from the outside world?
11. "_____, idle _____, I know not what they mean,
_____ from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes..."
What word is missing from these three blanks?
12. "Are God and _____ then at strife,
That _____ lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear..."
Who is "she" in these verses?
13. "Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him _____."
What word is missing from the blank?
14. What Tennyson poem retells the legend of King Arthur?
15. "Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the _____!
Charge for the guns!' he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."
What is missing from these lines?
Source: Author
skylarb
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
looney_tunes before going online.
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