Personal Helicon Quizzes

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Personal Helicon Quiz

1 What is the Helicon primarily associated with?
Romantic love

Moral redemption

Spiritual healing

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

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 speaker's desire to explore, counter to social expectation
3 What does the phrase "the trapped sky" most likely refer to?
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

The reflection of the sky
4 What is the focus of the speaker's childhood exploration?
Trees

Wells

Caves

Ponds
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 make him feel that he is not alone, even in remote places

They help him hear and understand himself anew
6 The speaker implies that he has changed his behavior as an adult for which reason?
He realizes that his explorations were insensitive to his neighbors

He must care for his family and cannot take risks

He does not want to be thought vain or undignified

He has become physically weak, though he is mentally sharp
7 The phrase "the dark drop" is an example of which of the following?
Understatement

Simile

Personification

Alliteration
8 How many stanzas are in the poem?
3

5

4

2
9 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
ABCBCBA

ABC CBA

ABAB

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

Narcissus

Persephone

Hercules
11 What type of stanzas comprise this poem?
3

6

5

4
12 Which word best describes the young speaker?
Listless

Kind

Industrious

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

Scarce

Haunting

Frightening
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 family stories and folktales

Through writing poetry
15 Which sound creates assonance in the phrase "pumps with buckets and windlasses"?
P's

U's

B's

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

"a rat slapped across my reflection."

"I savoured the rich crash"

"I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky"
17 Which of the following lines contains hyperbole?
"A shallow one under a dry stone ditch"

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

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

"I savoured the rich crash..."
18 Which of the following elements of wells assume the most significance in this poem?
Fluidity and movement

Depth and darkness

Dirtiness and murkiness

Echoes and reflections
19 Which of the following is true of Ireland's holy wells?
They are not true wells, but rather manmade pools

They are largely concentrated in the Dublin area

They are often associated with a patron saint

They are usually surrounded by religious buildings
20 What is the "white face" described in stanza 3?
The speaker's deceased ancestors

The speaker's reflection

The spirit of the local holy well

An unidentified wild animal
21 Which of the following words is an example of onomatopoeia?
Dank

scaresome

Ditch

Crash
22 For which of the following purposes do people often use holy wells?
Watering crops

Healing the sick

Divining the future

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

Metaphor

Enjambment

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

Bitter

Contemplative

Nostalgic
25 What does the word "fructify" mean?
To sweeten

To make something productive

To rot or decay

To sanctify or devote to a saint

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