Second Final Quiz

[ernesto thaddeus m. solmerano]

Poetry Analysis Test

Musée des Beaux Arts
By W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

1. This poem is a/an:
a. ode
b. elegy
c. sonnet
d. song
e. simple lyric
2. The “Old Masters” mentioned in the poem are:
a. poets
b. painters
c. martyrs
d. saints
e. landlords
3. The antecedent of the pronoun “they” in line 9 is:
a. children
b. Old Masters
c. the aged
d. someone else
e. What antecedent?
4. The allusion in the poem to the “dreadful martyrdom” probably refers to:
a. fall of Icarus
b. suffering of the ploughman
c. pain of childbirth
d. Crucifixion of Christ
e. massacre of the innocents
5. In the poem the drowning of Icarus is:
a. an event that could have been avoided
b. an act of determined by fate
c. a sign of God’s displeasure
d. an added illustration of martyrdom
e. a subject appropriate for art
6. The poem begins with:
a. a general statement
b. a vivid image
c. a bemused ironic statement
d. a mythological allusions
e. an apostrophe to artists
7. The speaker states that Icarus’s death was:
a. the result of failure to obey
b. a sign of God’s wrath
c. a moment of historic importance
d. an event that produced no reaction
e. the result of a misjudgment of the sun’s power
8. The speaker suggests that the miraculous birth was
a. an event that pleased only the aged
b. a great moment in the history of religion
c. the beginning of Christianity
d. a popular subject of art
e. an event that drew the ploughman to the manger
9. The poem expresses:
a. moral indignation
b. religious fervor
c. aesthetic appreciation
d. direct and matter-of-fact comment
e. misanthropy
10. The tone of the poem is:
a. sublime
b. sentimental
c. ironic
d. indignant
e. vitriolic