Immortal Lines from Classic Poems Quiz

Answer: Paradise Lost

These are the opening lines of John Milton's Magnum Opus "Paradise Lost". Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, writer and civil servant under Oliver Cromwell in the Commonwealth of England. "Paradise Lost" is Milton's greatest work, was written in blank-verse and is ranked as an epic alongside Homer's "Iliad" and Virgil's "Aenid" in its scope. "Paradise Lost" was first published in ten books in 1667, and then in 12 books in 1674 and consists of almost 11,000 lines. Milton followed up "Paradise Lost" with its sequel, "Paradise Regained", and the tragedy "Samson Agonistes", in 1671.

He is also known for his treatise condemning censorship, "Areopagitica".

Answer: Ode on a Grecian Urn

These are the last lines from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn". The poem was written in 1819 and is considered one of Keats's "Five Great Odes of 1819" which also included "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "To Autumn".

John Keats (1795 - 1821) was one of the greatest poets of the English Romantic movement during the early nineteenth century and in his short lifespan wrote odes which remain to this day among the most popular poems in English literature. Keats died of tuberculosis, contracted during 1820. Shelley wrote a very beautiful elegy called "Adonais" on the death of Keats.

Answer: How Do I Love Thee?

These are the last lines from one of E B Browning's most famous poems, "How Do I Love Thee?", also known as "Sonnet 43". Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806- 1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era and was the wife of another famous poet Robert Browning. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime and she had a major influence on many writers, including Edgar Allan Poe.

"How Do I Love Thee?" is part of a collection of forty-four love sonnets called "Sonnets From The Portuguese" that she wrote during her courtship with Robert Browning.

Answer: For Whom the Bell Tolls

These are the opening lines of John Donne's most famous poem "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The lines were not originally a poem, but part of a sermon ("Meditation #17 From Devotions upon Emergent Occasions") that have been read as a poem down the years.

John Donne (1572 - 1631) was a major figure among the metaphysical poets. He was noted for writing very beautiful and sensuous sonnets, love poetry and songs in his early years and religious poems, elegies, satires and sermons in his later years.

His later sermons influenced many great future works of literature, such as Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and Thomas Merton's "No Man is an Island". The very last lines of the same poem quoted above are: "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

Answer: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

These are the opening lines from Thomas Gray's famous masterpiece "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". The poem was a literary sensation when first published in 1751 and has made a lasting contribution to English literature. It is still one of the most popular and most frequently quoted poems in the English language.

Answer: Ulysses

The last lines of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses" (not to be confused with Homer's epic or James Joyce's novel of the same name) have since become the motto of many schools and organizations around the world. These lines are also inscribed on a cross at Observation Hill in Antarctica, to commemorate explorer Robert Scott and his party, who died on their return trip from the South Pole in 1912.

Tennyson (1809 - 1892) was a Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language. His most famous poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." is regarded as one of the greatest poems of the 19th century and was a great favorite of Queen Victoria.

Answer: Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language. He was a major influence on some of the greatest poets and writers of England and the United States, including Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lord Byron, Henry David Thoreau, William Butler Yeats.

The novelist Mary Shelley ("Frankenstein") was his wife. P B Shelley died suddenly when he drowned in a storm, less than a month before his 30th birthday.

Answer: Tintern Abbey

The opening lines from William Wordsworth's "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye Valley during a tour, July 13, 1798" that is often shortened to "Tintern Abbey", or "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey".

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with Samuel Taylor Coleridge when he published "Lyrical Ballads". His best work is generally considered to be "The Prelude", a semiautobiographical poem. Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Answer: If

These are the last lines of one of Kipling's greatest poems (and my own personal favorite) "If". Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English author and poet born in Bombay, India; he is best known for his works of fiction "The Jungle Book", and "Kim". Kipling was one of the most popular writers in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize.

Answer: The Waste Land

Thomas Stearns Eliot's "The Waste Land" (first published in 1922) is one of modern English's greatest works. The five parts of this poem are entitled: "The Burial of the Dead" (with the famous opening lines "April is the cruelest month/ breeding Lilacs out of the dead land/ mixing Memory and desire,"), "A Game of Chess" "The Fire Sermon" "Death by Water" and "What the Thunder Said". T S Eliot (1888-1965) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.