Personal Helicon Quizzes

Personal Helicon Quiz

1 What is the Helicon primarily associated with?
Artistic inspiration

Moral redemption

Spiritual healing

Romantic love
2 What is the poem's major conflict?
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

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

The tension between modernity and local tradition
3 What does the phrase "the trapped sky" most likely refer to?
The reflection of the sky

The sky through a stained-glass window

The appearance of a cloudy sky before a storm

The adult speaker's narrow memory of childhood landscapes
4 What is the focus of the speaker's childhood exploration?
Ponds

Wells

Trees

Caves
5 What does the speaker like about echoes?
They feel like confirmation of God or other spiritual beings

They help him hear and understand himself anew

They cause nearby animals to respond

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 does not want to be thought vain or undignified

He must care for his family and cannot take risks

He has become physically weak, though he is mentally sharp

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

Alliteration

Personification

Understatement
8 How many stanzas are in the poem?
4

5

2

3
9 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
ABC CBA

ABABAB

ABCBCBA

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

Hercules

Persephone

Narcissus
11 What type of stanzas comprise this poem?
4

5

6

3
12 Which word best describes the young speaker?
Kind

Industrious

Listless

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

Scarce

Jumpy

Frightening
14 How does the speaker reconnect to his childhood passions as an adult?
Through documenting the sites he once explored

Through family stories and folktales

Through writing poetry

Through visiting his old home
15 Which sound creates assonance in the phrase "pumps with buckets and windlasses"?
P's

U's

S's

B's
16 Which line contains alliterative R sounds?
"To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring"

"I savoured the rich crash"

"I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky"

"a rat slapped across my reflection."
17 Which of the following lines contains hyperbole?
"As a child, they could not keep me from wells"

"A shallow one under a dry stone ditch"

"I savoured the rich crash..."

"...a rat slapped across my reflection."
18 Which of the following elements of wells assume the most significance in this poem?
Echoes and reflections

Dirtiness and murkiness

Depth and darkness

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

They are often associated with a patron saint

They are usually surrounded by religious buildings

They are not true wells, but rather manmade pools
20 What is the "white face" described in stanza 3?
The speaker's deceased ancestors

An unidentified wild animal

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

Cleaning spiritually unclean objects

Watering crops

Divining the future
23 Which element of poetry does the speaker highlight in the poem's final lines?
Rhyme

Metaphor

Enjambment

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

Playful

Bitter

Contemplative
25 What does the word "fructify" mean?
To rot or decay

To sweeten

To sanctify or devote to a saint

To make something productive

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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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