Personal Helicon Quizzes

Personal Helicon Quiz

1 What is the Helicon primarily associated with?
Artistic inspiration

Romantic love

Moral redemption

Spiritual healing
2 What is the poem's major conflict?
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 tension between modernity and local tradition

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 adult speaker's narrow memory of childhood landscapes

The reflection of the sky

The appearance of a cloudy sky before a storm
4 What is the focus of the speaker's childhood exploration?
Wells

Trees

Ponds

Caves
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 must care for his family and cannot take risks

He has become physically weak, though he is mentally sharp

He does not want to be thought vain or undignified
7 The phrase "the dark drop" is an example of which of the following?
Alliteration

Simile

Understatement

Personification
8 How many stanzas are in the poem?
2

5

3

4
9 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
ABC CBA

ABAB

ABCBCBA

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

Persephone

Narcissus

Odysseus
11 What type of stanzas comprise this poem?
3

5

4

6
12 Which word best describes the young speaker?
Industrious

Kind

Curious

Listless
13 What is meant by the word "scaresome"?
Haunting

Jumpy

Frightening

Scarce
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?
"I savoured the rich crash"

"a rat slapped across my reflection."

"To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring"

"I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky"
17 Which of the following lines contains hyperbole?
"I savoured the rich crash..."

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

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

"A shallow one under a dry stone ditch"
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 not true wells, but rather manmade pools

They are largely concentrated in the Dublin area

They are usually surrounded by religious buildings
20 What is the "white face" described in stanza 3?
The spirit of the local holy well

The speaker's deceased ancestors

The speaker's reflection

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

Crash

Dank

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

Divining the future

Healing the sick

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

Metaphor

Rhyme

Enjambment
24 Which does NOT describe the poem's tone?
Bitter

Playful

Contemplative

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

To sanctify or devote to a saint

To sweeten

To rot or decay

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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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