Quizzes

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
10 Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Answer each of the following questions carefully. Fill in your answer on the Scantron form dark and fully, erasing all stray marks.

• 1. According to the first stanza, Autumn ‘conspires’ with the sun to make each aspect of nature more
  • A. beautiful
  • B. verdant
  • C. fecund
  • D. enduring
  • E. blighted
• 2. Which of the following words does NOT help to establish the bountiful impression of Autumn that dominates stanza one?
  • A. “load” (line 3)
  • B. “mossed” (line 5)
  • C. “swell” (line 7)
  • D. “plump” (line 7)
  • E. “o’er-brimmed” (line 11)
• 3. In relation to the first nine lines of the poem, lines 10-11 reveal that Autumn essentially
  • A. engenders
  • B. enthralls
  • C. deludes
  • D. sanctifies
  • E. destroys
• 4. In describing Autumn in the first two stanzas, the speaker relies heavily upon
  • A. personification
  • B. metonymy
  • C. allusion
  • D. simile
  • E. hyperbole
• 5. All of the following might be said to be a part of Autumn’s “store” EXCEPT the
  • A. cloaking mists
  • B. fruit-laden vines
  • C. thatch-eaves
  • D. twined flowers
  • E. oozing cider
• 6. The second stanza’s allusion to the harvester, death, is abetted by all of the following words EXCEPT
  • A. “winnowing” (line 15)
  • B. “hook” (line 17)
  • C. “swath” (line 20)
  • D. “laden” (line 20)
  • E. “stubble-plains” (line 26)
• 7. The depiction of Autumn in the second stanza is BEST labeled
  • A. languid
  • B. optimistic
  • C. redolent
  • D. defiant
  • E. forbidding
• 8. Which of the following is NOT a member of the natural mourning chorus in stanza three?
  • A. the gnats
  • B. the lambs
  • C. the wind
  • D. the crickets
  • E. the robin
• 9. The diction of the third stanza suggests that Autumn’s music is
  • A. cacophonous
  • B. effervescent
  • C. melancholy
  • D. soporific
  • E. sporadic
• 10. All of the following devices of sound are used in stanza three to describe the music of Autumn EXCEPT
  • A. masculine rhyme
  • B. internal rhyme
  • C. assonance
  • D. onomatopoeia
  • E. alliteration
• 11. Line 25, “While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,” contains an example of
  • A. euphemism
  • B. metaphor
  • C. malapropism
  • D. hyperbole
  • E. paradox
• 12. Despite the poem’s conclusion, it may be optimistically inferred by the reader that death’s triumph is
  • A. negated by the ambrosial abundance
  • B. dulled by the narcotic of the poppies
  • C. mitigated by the mourning to spring
  • D. denied by the regeneration of spring
  • E. impeded by the capriciousness of the sun