Personal Helicon Quizzes

Personal Helicon Quiz

1 What is the Helicon primarily associated with?
Moral redemption

Artistic inspiration

Romantic love

Spiritual healing
2 What is the poem's major conflict?
The tension between modernity and local tradition

The speaker's parents' hopes for him versus his friends' pressures

The speaker's desire to explore, counter to social expectation

The speaker's inability to decide whether to live a rural or a cosmopolitan life
3 What does the phrase "the trapped sky" most likely refer to?
The reflection of the sky

The adult speaker's narrow memory of childhood landscapes

The sky through a stained-glass window

The appearance of a cloudy sky before a storm
4 What is the focus of the speaker's childhood exploration?
Ponds

Wells

Caves

Trees
5 What does the speaker like about echoes?
They cause nearby animals to respond

They feel like confirmation of God or other spiritual beings

They help him hear and understand himself anew

They make him feel that he is not alone, even in remote places
6 The speaker implies that he has changed his behavior as an adult for which reason?
He has become physically weak, though he is mentally sharp

He does not want to be thought vain or undignified

He must care for his family and cannot take risks

He realizes that his explorations were insensitive to his neighbors
7 The phrase "the dark drop" is an example of which of the following?
Personification

Understatement

Alliteration

Simile
8 How many stanzas are in the poem?
3

5

2

4
9 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
ABABAB

ABCBCBA

ABC CBA

ABAB
10 To which mythological figure does the poem allude?
Hercules

Persephone

Odysseus

Narcissus
11 What type of stanzas comprise this poem?
4

6

3

5
12 Which word best describes the young speaker?
Listless

Curious

Kind

Industrious
13 What is meant by the word "scaresome"?
Haunting

Frightening

Scarce

Jumpy
14 How does the speaker reconnect to his childhood passions as an adult?
Through visiting his old home

Through documenting the sites he once explored

Through writing poetry

Through family stories and folktales
15 Which sound creates assonance in the phrase "pumps with buckets and windlasses"?
S's

B's

U's

P's
16 Which line contains alliterative R sounds?
"I savoured the rich crash"

"To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring"

"a rat slapped across my reflection."

"I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky"
17 Which of the following lines contains hyperbole?
"I savoured the rich crash..."

"As a child, they could not keep me from wells"

"...a rat slapped across my reflection."

"A shallow one under a dry stone ditch"
18 Which of the following elements of wells assume the most significance in this poem?
Fluidity and movement

Echoes and reflections

Depth and darkness

Dirtiness and murkiness
19 Which of the following is true of Ireland's holy wells?
They are largely concentrated in the Dublin area

They are usually surrounded by religious buildings

They are often associated with a patron saint

They are not true wells, but rather manmade pools
20 What is the "white face" described in stanza 3?
An unidentified wild animal

The speaker's deceased ancestors

The speaker's reflection

The spirit of the local holy well
21 Which of the following words is an example of onomatopoeia?
Ditch

scaresome

Crash

Dank
22 For which of the following purposes do people often use holy wells?
Healing the sick

Watering crops

Divining the future

Cleaning spiritually unclean objects
23 Which element of poetry does the speaker highlight in the poem's final lines?
Meter

Enjambment

Metaphor

Rhyme
24 Which does NOT describe the poem's tone?
Nostalgic

Playful

Bitter

Contemplative
25 What does the word "fructify" mean?
To sanctify or devote to a saint

To sweeten

To make something productive

To rot or decay

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Personal Helicon study guide contains a biography of Seamus Heaney, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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