Free Poetry MCQs with Answers

889 Poetry MCQs from English Literature, each with the correct answer and a written explanation of why it is correct. Free and unlimited, with no account needed.

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889 questions · page 3 of 45

  • A. George Bernard Shaw
  • B. William Shakespeare
  • C. A. Lord Tennyson
  • D. Christopher Marlowe

Explanation: “The Vision of Sin” is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in Poems in 1842. The name is often shortened in options to “A.

Correct answer: A. Lord Tennyson
  • A. Ode to Nightingale
  • B. Ode to Grecian Urn
  • C. Ode to Psyche
  • D. None of these

Explanation: The famous conclusion, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” appears in Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Correct answer: Ode to Grecian Urn
  • A. Ode on a Grecian Urn
  • B. The Prelude
  • C. Ode to Autumn
  • D. None of these

Explanation: These lines come from John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, where the poet contrasts the sweetness of heard music with the imagined…

Correct answer: Ode on a Grecian Urn
  • A. Shelley
  • B. Keats
  • C. Byron
  • D. Blake

Explanation: John Keats wrote “To Autumn,” one of the major Romantic odes, celebrating the richness and maturity of the autumn season.

Correct answer: Keats
  • A. The Wanderer
  • B. Beowulf
  • C. The Seafarer
  • D. Dream of the Road

Explanation: Beowulf is generally regarded as the earliest surviving long poem in English, composed in Old English.

Correct answer: Beowulf
  • A. a fourteen line stanza
  • B. a twenty line stanza
  • C. a thirteen line stanza
  • D. a fifteen line stanza

Explanation: A quinzaine is a fifteen-line poem or stanza, from the French word quinze, meaning fifteen.

Correct answer: a fifteen line stanza
  • A. S. T. Coleridge
  • B. P. B. Shelley
  • C. William Wordsworth
  • D. Lord Byron

Explanation: William Wordsworth wrote the well-known Lucy poems, including “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” and “I Travelled among Unknown Men.”…

Correct answer: William Wordsworth
  • A. The Canterbury Tales
  • B. Don Juan
  • C. The Prelude
  • D. None of theseRead Classic Poetry

Explanation: Wordsworth’s long autobiographical poem is The Prelude, which traces the growth of his poetic mind and relationship with nature.

Correct answer: The Prelude
  • A. William Wordsworth
  • B. S. T. Coleridge
  • C. W. Somerset Maugham
  • D. Sir Walter Scott

Explanation: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s major Romantic ballad, first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

Correct answer: S. T. Coleridge
  • A. Love
  • B. childhood
  • C. Inexperience
  • D. Innocence

Explanation: Blake’s Songs of Innocence is paired with Songs of Experience, presenting innocence and experience as contrasting states of human life.

Correct answer: Innocence
  • A. Wordsworth
  • B. Keats
  • C. None of these
  • D. All of these

Explanation: “Lucy Gray” is a narrative poem by William Wordsworth, describing a mysterious child who disappears in the snow.

Correct answer: Wordsworth
  • A. William Shakespeare
  • B. Shelley
  • C. Wordsworth
  • D. Robert Browning

Explanation: Andrea del Sarto is a dramatic monologue by Robert Browning, named after the Renaissance painter known as the “faultless painter.”…

Correct answer: Robert Browning
  • A. all things, both great and small,will perish
  • B. man is mortal,art immortal
  • C. imagination is stronger than fact
  • D. history repeats

Explanation: The ruined statue in Ozymandias shows that human power, pride and achievements eventually perish, making option a the broadest statement…

Correct answer: all things, both great and small,will perish
  • A. 1788
  • B. 1789
  • C. 1790
  • D. 1791

Explanation: George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born on 22 January 1788 in London. The nearby dates are a common recall trap in questions about Romantic…

Correct answer: 1788
  • A. William Wordsworth
  • B. P. B Shelley
  • C. Lord Byron
  • D. John Keats

Explanation: “The Solitary Reaper” is Wordsworth’s poem about a Highland girl singing while reaping in the fields.

Correct answer: William Wordsworth
  • A. Shelley
  • B. Shakespeare
  • C. Sophocles
  • D. Euripedes

Explanation: Prometheus Unbound is Shelley’s lyrical drama, inspired by the Greek myth of Prometheus and written in a visionary, revolutionary spirit.

Correct answer: Shelley
  • A. Historical poem
  • B. figurative story
  • C. song of lamentation
  • D. short story

Explanation: An elegy is a poem of mourning or lamentation, usually for someone who has died.

Correct answer: song of lamentation
  • A. Tennyson
  • B. Browning
  • C. Blake
  • D. None of these

Explanation: Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “The Lotos-Eaters,” based on the episode of the Lotus-Eaters in Homer’s Odyssey.

Correct answer: Tennyson
  • A. Keats
  • B. Donne
  • C. William Blake
  • D. Spenser

Explanation: William Blake was both a poet and a visual artist whose own illustrations often accompanied his poetry.

Correct answer: William Blake
  • A. play
  • B. satire
  • C. prose
  • D. translation

Explanation: “The Medal” is a political satire in verse in which Dryden attacks the ideas and reputation represented by the medal.

Correct answer: satire