A Description of the Morning quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary tradition best describes 'A Description of the Morning'?

   • Correct answer: Augustan Satire / Mock-Pastoral
   • Elizabethan Sonnet / Love Lyric
   • Romantic Lyric / Nature Poetry
   • Modernist Free Verse / Imagism
   • Victorian Poetry / Dramatic Monologue

   Correct -- Augustan satire is exactly right. Swift writes in heroic couplets, parodies the classical pastoral dawn poem, and uses wit to critique early-1700s London society.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Betty creeping back to her own bed, debt collectors gathering at a lord's gate, and the turnkey's prisoners coming home: what do these morning scenes have in common?

   • Each shows a worker who takes pride in rising early for an honest trade
   • Each shows rich and poor Londoners greeting one another kindly at dawn
   • Each shows someone hurrying to get the streets ready for a grand public celebration
   • Correct answer: Each shows the new day beginning with someone's hidden misdeed or unpaid debt

   Swift's busy morning keeps uncovering wrongdoing. Betty is hiding that she spent the night in her master's bed, the duns are creditors waiting for a lord who has not paid his bills, and the turnkey lets his prisoners out at night to steal so they can pay him fees. Under the ordinary bustle of a London dawn, the poem quietly shows debt, vice, and crime at every level of society.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What is the verse form of 'A Description of the Morning'?

   • Ballad stanza in alternating tetrameter and trimeter
   • Blank verse in iambic tetrameter
   • Correct answer: Heroic couplets -- rhymed iambic pentameter
   • Free verse with no fixed meter

   The poem is written in heroic couplets: pairs of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter (ten syllables each, five stressed-unstressed feet). It's the dominant high-satire form of the Augustan age and the same form Pope uses.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What image does Swift use to signal the approach of morning in his opening couplet?

   • A shepherd opening the gate of his sheepfold
   • A rising sun breaking through the clouds
   • A rooster crowing across the rooftops
   • Correct answer: A solitary hackney-coach appearing on the street

   The poem's first image is 'an hackney-coach appearing' -- a horse-drawn taxi for hire. Swift replaces Apollo's heavenly sun chariot with the most ordinary piece of London street equipment, deflating the classical convention from the very first line.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What is Betty doing in the second couplet, and why?

   • She is preparing the household before her master awakens
   • Correct answer: She has been sleeping with her master and is hiding the evidence
   • She has been caring for her ailing master and is returning to her own room
   • She is gathering the soiled linens from her master's bed for washing

   Betty 'had flown' from her master's bed and 'softly stole to discompose her own' -- she sneaks back to her own room and rumples her bedding to make it look slept in, covering up an affair with the master of the house. In two lines Swift indicts the moral life of the respectable household.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What does "Kennel" mean in this story?

   • A narrow alley or passage running between buildings
   • A fireplace or open hearth in a kitchen
   • An enclosure or shelter where dogs are kept and fed
   • Correct answer: The open gutter running along a city street

   In Swift's London, 'kennel' meant the open drainage gutter that ran along the street, where filth and rainwater collected. The youth sweeps its edge where cart wheels have worn the paving down. Reading 'doghouse' into the line misses the whole urban-grime point.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does "Duns" mean in this story?

   • Invited guests arriving for a lord's morning reception
   • Correct answer: Persistent bill collectors demanding repayment of debts
   • Officers of the royal court sent on government business
   • Horses of a dull grayish-brown color, kept for pulling coaches

   'Duns' are debt collectors who hounded eighteenth-century debtors. Their arrival at his lordship's gate first thing in the morning is a pointed joke -- even aristocrats are running from creditors before breakfast.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What is happening with the turnkey and his 'flock' in the poem?

   • He is a schoolmaster welcoming back truant students
   • He is a constable arresting overnight thieves on the street
   • Correct answer: He is a prison guard profiting from releasing prisoners to steal overnight
   • He is a shepherd counting sheep returning from pasture

   A turnkey is a prison guard (he holds the keys). Swift's turnkey releases prisoners at night so they can commit thefts, then collects a share of the stolen money when they return. The 'flock' is a savage metaphor -- the shepherd of justice is actually farming criminals for profit.

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9. 9

   Question 9. What is the main purpose of Swift's mock-heroic style in this poem?

   • Correct answer: To deflate the conventions of classical dawn poetry
   • To teach readers how to write in heroic couplets
   • To celebrate the dignity of ordinary London workers
   • To mourn the loss of the countryside in a growing city

   Mock-heroic dresses a low subject in high clothes. Swift uses the grandest verse form of his century -- the heroic couplet, reserved for epics and serious satire -- to describe a servant sneaking out of bed, a boy sweeping dirt, and creditors gathering at a gate. The mismatch between form and content is the joke, and the point is that the classical tradition has no vocabulary for the real, dirty, modern city.

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10. 10

    Question 10. In which periodical was the poem first published on April 30, 1709?

    • The Review
    • The Spectator
    • Correct answer: The Tatler
    • The Gentleman's Magazine

    The poem first appeared in The Tatler No. 9, the literary paper founded earlier that month by Swift's friend Richard Steele. The Spectator (also by Steele, with Addison) did not begin until 1711.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What sound device appears in 'And softly stole to discompose her own'?

    • Alliteration of hard consonants imitating thunder
    • Correct answer: Sibilance that mimics Betty's quiet, furtive movements
    • Onomatopoeia recreating the creak of a bed
    • End-rhyme emphasizing the moral of the scene

    The repeated soft 's' sounds (sibilance) of 'softly stole' imitate Betty's tiptoe movements back to her own room. Swift frequently uses sound to paint the scene -- compare 'cadence deep' (low coal-man cry) against 'shriller notes' (high chimney-sweep cry) a few lines later.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does the poem suggest about social class and the workday?

    • Correct answer: The working poor are already at labor while their masters sleep
    • Everyone in London wakes at the same time together
    • The rich are the first ones out of bed each morning
    • The countryside is livelier at dawn than the city

    Every figure named -- Betty, the 'prentice, Moll, the small-coal man, the sweep, brickdust Moll, the schoolboys -- is a servant, laborer, or child of the working class. The aristocrat 'his lordship' is only mentioned because creditors are at his gate. Swift makes clear who keeps the city running, and who is still asleep upstairs.

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13. 13

    Question 13. How many lines long is 'A Description of the Morning'?

    • Twenty-four lines
    • Twelve lines
    • Fourteen lines
    • Correct answer: Eighteen lines

    The poem is 18 lines -- nine successive heroic couplets. Its compact length is part of its genius: Swift packs an entire urban panorama into fewer lines than a sonnet-and-a-half.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Which companion poem does Swift publish the following year as a longer, wetter sequel to this one?

    • The Battle of the Books
    • Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift
    • The Journal of a Modern Lady
    • Correct answer: A Description of a City Shower

    'A Description of a City Shower' (1710, 63 lines) shows the same London drenched by a sudden storm that washes filth through the streets, and directly parodies Virgil's Georgics. The two poems are almost always taught together as Swift's foundational experiments in urban realist verse.

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15. 15

    Question 15. How would you best describe the tone of the poem?

    • Celebratory and patriotic toward London
    • Passionately outraged and morally indignant
    • Correct answer: Dryly observational and quietly satirical
    • Nostalgic and sentimental about the old city

    Swift's tone here is closer to Horace than to Juvenal. The speaker catalogues London at dawn in a deadpan voice, never editorializing -- even the turnkey's corruption is reported in the same even meter as the schoolboys. The reader supplies the moral judgment, which makes the satire land harder.

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16. 16

    Question 16. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • The poem begins with the sunrise over the countryside.

      Didn't happen

      The poem begins with a hackney-coach appearing in a London street. There is no countryside and no sun -- only a 'ruddy morn' glimpsed past city rooftops.

    • Betty sneaks out of her master's bed and rumples her own to cover it up.

      Happened

      The second couplet: 'Now Betty from her master's bed had flown, / And softly stole to discompose her own.'

    • Moll is a noblewoman who rides through the city in a carriage.

      Didn't happen

      Moll is a maid who whirls her mop with 'dext'rous airs' to scrub the entry and stairs. A second 'brickdust Moll' is a street-hawker selling scouring powder.

    • The turnkey lets prisoners out overnight to steal for him.

      Happened

      'The turnkey now his flock returning sees, / Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.'

    • Swift writes the poem in blank verse.

      Didn't happen

      The poem is in heroic couplets -- rhymed iambic pentameter. There is end-rhyme in every pair of lines.

    • Creditors ('duns') gather at a lord's gate in the morning.

      Happened

      'Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet' -- even the aristocracy is dodging debt collectors before the day begins.

    • Schoolboys appear energetic and eager at the end of the poem.

      Didn't happen

      The poem ends with schoolboys who 'lag with satchels in their hands' -- they drag their feet reluctantly toward class.

    • The poem was first published in The Tatler in 1709.

      Happened

      It appeared anonymously in The Tatler No. 9 on April 30, 1709, introduced by Richard Steele.

    • Swift names Apollo explicitly in the opening line.

      Didn't happen

      Swift never uses Apollo's name. The allusion works by substitution -- the hackney-coach quietly takes Apollo's place, and 'ruddy morn' takes the place of Homer's 'rosy-fingered dawn.' You're meant to notice what is missing.

    • The chimney-sweep's cry is shriller than the small-coal man's.

      Happened

      'The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep, / Till drown'd in shriller notes of chimney-sweep.'

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