The Eolian Harp quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which form best describes "The Eolian Harp"?

   • A dramatic monologue in heroic couplets
   • A Pindaric ode in irregular rhymed stanzas
   • Correct answer: A conversation poem in blank verse
   • A literary ballad in rhymed quatrains

   Correct. The poem is unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) spoken to a quiet companion, Sara. It moves from a real evening scene into reflection and back to the cottage, the pattern of Coleridge's conversation poems.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Where are the speaker and Sara as the poem opens?

   • Correct answer: Beside their cottage, overgrown with jasmine and myrtle
   • In a church garden on the morning of their wedding day
   • On the seashore, listening to the waves break on the sand
   • On a hillside at noon, watching sunbeams dance on the sea

   The speaker says it is 'most soothing sweet' to sit beside their Cot, 'o'ergrown / With white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leav'd Myrtle.' The hillside at noon is a memory that comes later in the poem, and the sea is only heard 'distant.'

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3. 3

   Question 3. Where do the 'exquisite' scents come from?

   • A rose garden
   • An apple orchard
   • A pine forest
   • Correct answer: A bean-field

   The speaker exclaims, 'How exquisite the scents / Snatch'd from yon bean-field!'

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4. 4

   Question 4. In the lines "The stilly murmur of the distant Sea / Tells us of silence," what does the sound of the sea do?

   • The sound reminds the speaker of a voyage he once made
   • Correct answer: The faint sound makes the evening's hush feel deeper
   • The roar of the waves drowns out the couple's talk
   • The noise of the surf warns that a storm is coming in

   This is a paradox: a sound that 'Tells us of silence.' The murmur is 'stilly' and 'distant,' so hearing it shows how hushed the world is, just as the line before says, 'the world so hush'd!'

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5. 5

   Question 5. As the breeze caresses the lute, what does the poem compare the lute to?

   • Correct answer: A shy young woman half yielding to her lover
   • A pilgrim chanting prayers at a holy shrine
   • A bird of paradise perching on a honeyed flower
   • A mother humming softly to a sleeping child

   The lute, 'by the desultory breeze caress'd,' is 'Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover.' The birds of Paradise appear a few lines on, and they describe the melodies, which never 'pause, nor perch.'

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6. 6

   Question 6. In the line "How by the desultory breeze caress'd," what does desultory mean?

   • Blowing steadily in one strong direction
   • Gloomy and dismal, like a mournful mood
   • Warm and humid, like a summer evening
   • Correct answer: Moving fitfully, without steady aim or pattern

   Desultory means jumping from one thing to another without plan. The breeze comes and goes, which is why the music swells, 'Boldlier swept,' and sinks again, and why the speaker later calls such winds 'random gales.'

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7. 7

   Question 7. The line "A light in sound, a sound-like power in light," blends hearing and sight. What is this mixing of the senses called?

   • Hyperbole, exaggerating to make a strong point
   • Onomatopoeia, using words that imitate sounds
   • Correct answer: Synesthesia, describing one sense as another
   • Apostrophe, speaking to someone who is absent

   Synesthesia describes one sense in terms of another: here sound has light in it and light has a power like sound. The blend supports the speaker's claim that one Life runs through everything and joins what seem to be separate things.

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8. 8

   Question 8. According to the speaker, why should it be impossible not to love all things?

   • Because the evening is far too lovely for anyone to feel anger
   • Correct answer: Because one Life fills the world and becomes its soul
   • Because Sara has taught him to see the good in every person
   • Because the harp's music proves that God has forgiven him

   He praises 'the one Life within us and abroad, / Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,' and concludes that 'it should have been impossible / Not to love all things in a world so fill'd.' Love follows from the unity of all life.

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9. 9

   Question 9. How does the speaker describe his mind as he lies on the hillside at noon?

   • Sleepy and blank, with no thoughts passing through it at all
   • Correct answer: Idle and passive, crossed by thoughts he neither calls nor holds
   • Busy and strained, working through a hard question of theology
   • Troubled and guilty, haunted by the memory of his past sins

   'Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd' and 'idle flitting phantasies' cross 'my indolent and passive brain,' as wild as the 'random gales' on the lute. His mind has become like the harp: it does not act, it is played.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does the speaker imagine in the passage that begins "And what if all of animated nature"?

    • Correct answer: That all living things are harps played by one divine breeze
    • That God built the harp so the poet could hear angels sing
    • That nature is dead matter only the human mind can stir
    • That the harp's music carries the voices of the dead to him

    He asks whether all of nature might 'Be but organic Harps diversely fram'd' that 'tremble into thought' as one 'intellectual breeze' sweeps over them, a breeze that is 'At once the Soul of each, and God of all.' Readers often call this idea pantheism.

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11. 11

    Question 11. In the line "Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze," what does plastic mean?

    • Artificial, made of some synthetic material
    • Easily bent, worn down or broken apart
    • Fake and insincere, lacking true feeling
    • Correct answer: Having the power to shape and form things

    In older English, plastic means formative or shaping, from a Greek word for molding. The breeze is a creative power that gives each 'organic Harp' its thought; the modern sense of a synthetic material did not exist yet.

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12. 12

    Question 12. Why does it matter that the speaker offers this idea as a question beginning 'what if'?

    • It shows the idea came to him in a dream the night before
    • It mocks the idea so that Sara will laugh along with him
    • Correct answer: It lets him try out the idea without claiming it is true
    • It shows he has already proved the idea in his reading

    The passage ends with a question mark: he floats the thought rather than asserting it. That leaves room for the next section, where Sara's reproof leads him to call such thoughts 'Dim and unhallow'd' and set them aside.

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13. 13

    Question 13. How does Sara first show that she disapproves of his speculation?

    • She rises and walks back inside the cottage
    • She lifts the lute from the window to silence it
    • She laughs and calls his notion a childish fancy
    • Correct answer: A mild reproof darts from her more serious eye

    'But thy more serious eye a mild reproof / Darts, O belovéd Woman!' Her look rejects such thoughts and 'biddest me walk humbly with my God.' The reproof is gentle, and he accepts it at once.

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14. 14

    Question 14. The speaker calls his speculations "Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break". What does this image suggest about them?

    • They are rare treasures he must guard from Sara
    • Correct answer: They dazzle for a moment but are empty and brief
    • They are dangerous ideas that could drown him
    • They are gifts from God rising from a holy spring

    Bubbles shine and then burst. He places them 'On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring,' so his bold ideas are pretty but hollow and short-lived, the 'shapings of the unregenerate mind' rather than holy truth.

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15. 15

    Question 15. In the last line, what has God given the speaker?

    • Wisdom, faith and a son
    • A harp, a hill and a song
    • Correct answer: Peace, this Cot and Sara
    • Fame, wealth and long life

    God 'gave me to possess / Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honour'd Maid!'

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16. 16

    Question 16. How does the poem's final line relate to its opening?

    • Correct answer: It returns to the cottage and Sara, now seen as God's gifts
    • It repeats the opening line word for word as a refrain
    • It leaves the cottage behind for a journey across the sea
    • It shows Sara asleep and the speaker alone with his harp

    The poem began with Sara's cheek on his arm beside 'our Cot.' It ends with God giving him 'Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honour'd Maid!' The circle back to the starting place, now seen with gratitude, is typical of Coleridge's conversation poems.

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17. 17

    Question 17. Which of these happen in the poem?

    • Sara rests her cheek on the speaker's arm as they sit by the cottage.

      Happened

      The poem opens: 'My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined / Thus on mine arm.'

    • Sara plucks the strings of the lute while the speaker listens.

      Didn't happen

      No hand plays the lute: it is 'by the desultory breeze caress'd' and its strings are 'Boldlier swept' by the wind.

    • The speaker watches the evening star shine serenely in the sky.

      Happened

      He marks 'the star of eve / Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be) / Shine opposite!'

    • A nightingale sings to the couple from the myrtle bushes.

      Didn't happen

      No bird sings in the poem. The only birds are 'birds of Paradise' in a simile for the harp's melodies.

    • The speaker recalls watching sunbeams dance on the sea at noon.

      Happened

      On the hill he beholds 'The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,' and the main is the open sea.

    • A sudden storm snaps the strings of the lute in the window.

      Didn't happen

      No storm comes. The breeze only swells and fades, and the poem ends in peace.

    • Sara agrees that all of nature may be harps played by God.

      Didn't happen

      She does the opposite: her 'more serious eye a mild reproof / Darts,' and she rejects 'such thoughts / Dim and unhallow'd.'

    • The speaker calls Sara a meek daughter in the family of Christ.

      Happened

      He addresses her as 'Meek Daughter in the family of Christ!' after her reproof.

    • The speaker vows to leave the cottage to study philosophy.

      Didn't happen

      He turns away from 'vain Philosophy' and ends by thanking God for 'this Cot' and for Sara.

    • The speaker calls himself a sinful man whom God has healed.

      Happened

      God 'with his saving mercies healéd me, / A sinful and most miserable man.'

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