Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. In this excerpt, the narrator is in London but wishes to be in which famous Kipling title city?
"I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?"
2. "Kabul town's a blasted place" asserts Kipling in his "Ford o' Kabul River". Which of these modern countries claims Kabul as its capital?
3. From which Kipling poem are the following lines taken?
"God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, but give us leave to pass.
We go to dig a nation's grave as great as England was.
For this Kingdom and this Glory and this Power and this Pride
Three hundred years it flourished--in three hundred days it died."
4. The poem "Bridge-Guard in the Karroo" opens with these lines:
"Sudden the desert changes,
The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
Stand up like the thrones of Kings --"
Where is the Karroo?
5. In a poem from 1912, which country does Kipling indicate is "England's oldest foe"?
6. 1892's "Buddha at Kamakura" opens with these lines:
"O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when "the heathen" pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!"
Where is Kamakura?
7. In 1901, Kipling published a poem which became hugely popular with the people of the nation about whom it was written. "The Young Queen" personifies which country in very flattering terms?
8. "Follow the Romany patteran
Sheer to the Austral Light,
Where the besom of God is the wild South wind,
Sweeping the sea-floors white."
While it is true that many of Kipling's "jingly" verses are not tremendously admired in this modern day, "The Gipsy Trail" remains both beautiful and readable. The poem follows a Gypsy caravan to the ends of the earth, but where are these nomadic people believed to have originated?
9. Kipling clearly didn't approve of "Delilah".
"Delilah Aberyswith was a lady -- not too young --
With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly-bitted tongue,
With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise,
And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days."
Where is Simla?
10. These lines are from "In the Neolithic Age".
"Still the world is wondrous large,--seven seas from marge to marge--
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of ______"
Source: Author
LIlahDeDah
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
agony before going online.
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