Dear Readers, we haven’t had a poetic quiz for a while, and as spring is the season that gets all red-blooded poets into a frenzy of verse-making, all I need you to do this week is to match the photo to the quote, with one extra point for identifying the poet and a further point for identifying the animal or plant, so that makes 45 points going begging in total.

As usual, all answers in the comments by 5 p.m. on Thursday 29th April (UK time) please; I’ll publish the results on Friday 30th April. And where did April go, exactly? They say that time speeds up as you get older, but this is ridiculous.

Also as usual, I will ‘hide’ your answers as soon as I see them but if you are easily influenced you might want to write your thoughts down on a piece of paper before you put them in the comments 🙂

So, if you think Quote A refers to the bird in Photo 1, your answer is 1) A. which, if correct will give you one point. If you think the poet is William Shakespeare and the bird is a penguin, you would get a further two points if you were correct (unlikely in this case :-))

Onwards!

Quotes

A) ‘When he perches on a stone
it’s a wet one.
He stands there, bobbing and bobbing
as though the water’s applauding him’

B) ‘Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and over the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly bright’.

C) ‘Yet there it was content to bloom,
In modest tints arrayed;
And there diffused its sweet perfume,
Within the silent shade’.

D) ‘ Yet Spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,
To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile’.

E) ‘ I watched them leap and run,
Their bodies hollowed in the sun
To thin transparency,
That I could clearly see
The shallow colour of their blood
Joyous in love’s full flood’.

F) ‘ Loveliest of trees, the xxxxx now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodlands ride
Wearing white for Eastertide’.

G) ‘ Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance’.

H) ‘ The phrases of his pleading
Were full of young delight;
And she that gave him heeding
Interpreted aright
His gay, sweet notes,-
So sadly marred in the reading,-
His tender notes. ‘

I) ‘ What pretty, drooping weeping flowers they are,
The clipt-frilled leaves the slender stalk they bear
On which the drooping flower hangs weeping dew’.

J) ‘ The xxxxx she’s a pretty bird,
She sings as she flies,
She brings us good tidings,
She tells us no lies;
She sucketh white flowers
For to make her voice clear,
And the more she sings ‘xxxx’
The summer draws near.’

K) ‘Ethereal minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!’

L) ‘That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease’.

M) ‘ Under the after-sunset sky
Two xxxxx sport and cry,
More white than is the moon on high,
Riding the dark surge silently;
More black than earth. Their cry
Is the one sound under the sky’.

N) ‘ Incorrigible, brash,
They brighten the cinder path of my childhood.
Unsubtle, the opposite of primroses,
But unlike primroses, capable
Of growing everywhere, railway track, pierhead,
Like our extrovert friends who never
Make us fall in love, yet fill
The primroseless, roseless gaps.

O) ‘ I love its growth at large and free
By untrod path and unlopped tree,
Or nodding by the unpruned hedge,
Or on the water’s dangerous edge
Where flags and meadowsweet blow rank
With rushes on the quaking bank’.

Photos