Poetry IV

A new literary quiz each week or so, usually with a theme. This week: Making no apologies, I present the Fourth Poetry Quiz. No tricks, nothing flashy. Ten more extracts from the Oxford Book of English Verse (Q's edition, of course). You get a gold point for each poet, and as many silver points as you like for each title. No cheating, now! Enjoy!

The quotations in these quizzes reflect my own tastes - Dead White Males, for the most part (Jane Austen, of course, counts as an honorary DWM). There will never be anything wilfully obscure. If you're the sort of person who sneers at the naïveté of the reviewers in the TLS and New York Review of Books, you'll recognize them at once. I welcome suggestions and insults. You'll find an e-mail tag lying around somewhere. Please put QUIZ in the subject line.

1)

Never seek to tell thy love,
  Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
  Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
  I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
  Ah! she did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,
  A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
  He took her with a sigh.


Answer

2)

Mortality, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones:
Here they lie had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands:
Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here 's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royall'st seed
That the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin:
Here the bones of birth have cried -
'Though gods they were, as men they died.'
Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings;
Here 's a world of pomp and state,
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.



Answer

3(Conclusion)

  Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.



Answer

4(Extract)

Calme was the day, and through the trembling ayre
Sweete-breathing Zephyrus did softly play
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titans beames, which then did glyster fayre;
When I, (whom sullein care,
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes Court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,
Like empty shaddowes, did afflict my brayne,)
Walkt forth to ease my payne
Along the shoare of silver streaming Themmes;
Whose rutty Bancke, the which his River hemmes,
Was paynted all with variable flowers,
And all the meades adornd with daintie gemmes
Fit to decke maydens bowres,
And crowne their Paramours
Against the Brydale day, which is not long:
  Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song.



Answer

5)

Hear the voice of the Bard,
Who present, past, and future, sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk'd among the ancient trees;

Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!

'O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.

'Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Is given thee till the break of day.'



Answer

6)

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that 's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.



Answer

7(Final verse)

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
            Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.



Answer

8)

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
  And loved your beauty with love false or true;
  But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
  Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
  And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.



Answer

9(Conclusion)

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
    Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
  Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
    Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
  When old age shall this generation waste,
    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'



Answer

10)

IF the red slayer think he slays,
  Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
  I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
  Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanish'd gods to me appear;
  And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
  When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
  And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
  And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
  Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.



Answer

1)
Love's Secret, William Blake. As always, a nice easy one to start with. The sine qua non of literary taste is a reverence for the incomparable genius of William Blake.


Back to Question 1

2)
On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey, Francis Beaumont. A familiar enough poem, but did you get its author? I almost feel like giving you an extra gold point if you did .... But no! I must be strong!


Back to Question 2

3)
To his Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell. The sometime M.P. for Hull didn't write a hell of a lot, but what he wrote was all pretty good stuff. Or is it just that only the good stuff has survived? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt.


Back to Question 3

4)
Prothalamion, Edmund Spenser. I seem to recall that we had a chunk of Epithalamion in the last Poetry Quiz. You can't have too much Spenser, eh?


Back to Question 4

5)
Hear the Voice, William Blake. All right, all right, where does it say in the rules that I can't have two bits of Blake, hmmmm?


Back to Question 5

6)
Dirge, John Webster. For a special bonus prize, what's the connexion between this, and No. 4?


Back to Question 6

7)
Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth. As I get older, I appreciate Wordsworth and Tennyson more than I once did.


Back to Question 7

8)
When You Are Old, William Butler Yeats. Not satisfied with being a great poet in his youth, Yeats went on to become an even greater poet in his old age. That's why he's the champion poet of the Twentieth Century.


Back to Question 8

9)
Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats. Yes, yes, forty drachmas a week, we know. Settle down, now! Only one more to go.


Back to Question 9

10)
Brahma, Ralph Waldo Emerson. RWE is much the least of the poets represented here, but this, I think, is a good poem. I hope you liked it, anyway, even if you didn't recognize it. Did anyone get ten gold points?


Back to Question 10

Don't bottle up your contempt and fury. Mail to davidjw@mindspring.com

Return to Start

Last Updated: 30 March 2007