A Psalm of Life Quizzes

A Psalm of Life Quiz 1

By Kristen Osborne-Bartucca · Last reviewed November 10, 2016

1 What year was the poem written?

1810

1840

1838

1870
2 The poem was included in the collection

The Courtship of Miles Standish

Voices of the Night

Tales from a Wayside Inn

Poems on Slavery
3 Who is the speaker?

A narrator

A young man

A psalmist

God
4 The main thing the young man advises is to

think

pray

act

question
5 The young man does not want to hear that life is

short

hard

an empty dream

complicated
6 "Life is real! Life is _______!"

earnest

complex

hard

happy
7 "Our destined end or way" is neither enjoyment nor

death

pain

sorrow

pleasure
8 Heartbeats are compared to

drums

footsteps

waves

lightning
9 Life is compared to a/an

garden

book

battlefield

sky
10 What animal does the young man not want to be like?

Pigs

Sheep

Donkeys

Cattle
11 We should live in

the afterlife

the future

the present

the past
12 Who reminds us we can make our lives sublime?

Our fathers

We do

Great men

Biblical teachers
13 What do great men leave behind (metaphorically)?

Footprints

Words

Shipwrecks

Ideas
14 Life is also compared to a/an

sky

mountain

forest

ocean
15 The young man says we should be "still achieving, still _____"

pursuing

questioning

asking

thinking
16 We must "learn to labor and to _____"

ask

die

win

wait
17 The tone is

optimistic

angry

confused

bleak
18 The young man advocates living

passively

heroically

ambivalently

selfishly
19 The poem exemplifies

Romanticism

Common Sense

Protestantism

all of these choices
20 The poem is reminiscent of the work of the

Realists

Transcendentalists

Calvinists

Pragmatists
21 Which line is an allusion to a bible verse?

"Art is long, and Time is fleeting"

"Be a hero in the strife!"

"For the soul is dead that slumbers"

"Dust thou art, to dust returnest"
22 The poem was written in the ___________ era.

imperialist

Jacksonian

Civil War

Revolutionary
23 The poem has a/an _________ quality.

ambiguous

admonishing

didactic

turgid
24 What was Longfellow said to have channeled into this work and others from the collection?

His grief over ill health

His grief over losing his wife

His grief over losing a child

His grief over losing his job
25 There are echos of the following in the poem except

Goethe

Spanish poets

Hawthorne

The Bible