80 Classic Poetry Trivia Questions with Answers
80 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?
In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which ancient figure appears in the opening epigraph?
Answer
The Cumaean Sibyl
What language is Beowulf, the great early English epic, written in?
Answer
Old English
How many books make up Homer’s Iliad?
Answer
24
In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, what image represents the speaker’s fading life near the poem’s end?
Answer
The glow of a dying fire
In Virgil’s Aeneid, what is the name of Aeneas’s father?
Answer
Anchises
In Homer’s Iliad, which god forges new armor for Achilles?
Answer
Hephaestus
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, what fruit does Eve eat from the forbidden tree?
Answer
The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
In Alexander Pope’s poem “The Rape of the Lock,” what object is cut from Belinda’s hair?
Answer
A lock of hair
In Ovid’s epic poem “Metamorphoses,” what kind of change links the poem’s stories?
Answer
Transformation
In Thomas Gray’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” where are the villagers buried?
Answer
A country churchyard
In Walt Whitman’s poetry collection “Leaves of Grass,” who is the author?
Answer
Walt Whitman
In Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess,” what artwork does the Duke show the envoy?
Answer
A portrait of his last duchess
In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee,” where does the speaker say Annabel Lee lived?
Answer
A kingdom by the sea
In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark,” what does the poet call the skylark?
Answer
A blithe Spirit