Personal Helicon Quizzes

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 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 tension between modernity and local tradition

The speaker's parents' hopes for him versus his friends' pressures
3 What does the phrase "the trapped sky" most likely refer to?
The appearance of a cloudy sky before a storm

The adult speaker's narrow memory of childhood landscapes

The sky through a stained-glass window

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

Wells

Trees

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

They cause nearby animals to respond

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 realizes that his explorations were insensitive to his neighbors

He does not want to be thought vain or undignified

He has become physically weak, though he is mentally sharp

He must care for his family and cannot take risks
7 The phrase "the dark drop" is an example of which of the following?
Personification

Alliteration

Simile

Understatement
8 How many stanzas are in the poem?
2

5

3

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

ABCBCBA

ABC CBA

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

Hercules

Persephone

Odysseus
11 What type of stanzas comprise this poem?
5

3

4

6
12 Which word best describes the young speaker?
Listless

Kind

Curious

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

Haunting

Scarce

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

Through family stories and folktales

Through writing poetry

Through documenting the sites he once explored
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"

"a rat slapped across my reflection."

"I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky"
17 Which of the following lines contains hyperbole?
"...a rat slapped across my reflection."

"A shallow one under a dry stone ditch"

"I savoured the rich crash..."

"As a child, they could not keep me from wells"
18 Which of the following elements of wells assume the most significance in this poem?
Dirtiness and murkiness

Fluidity and movement

Echoes and reflections

Depth and darkness
19 Which of the following is true of Ireland's holy wells?
They are often associated with a patron saint

They are largely concentrated in the Dublin area

They are not true wells, but rather manmade pools

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

The spirit of the local holy well

An unidentified wild animal

The speaker's reflection
21 Which of the following words is an example of onomatopoeia?
Dank

Crash

scaresome

Ditch
22 For which of the following purposes do people often use holy wells?
Cleaning spiritually unclean objects

Divining the future

Healing the sick

Watering crops
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?
Bitter

Contemplative

Playful

Nostalgic
25 What does the word "fructify" mean?
To make something productive

To sweeten

To rot or decay

To sanctify or devote to a saint

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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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