About This Quiz
No man is an island. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Halfway up the stairs is a stair where I sit. When the boys come back they will not be the same...
All of these are lines from some of the most famous works by some of the most famous poets in British history. Whether Scottish, Welsh, English, Northern Irish or from the various outlying islands, poets have been using the language of Shakespeare to create beautiful work since the beginning of British history and the English language. This came into being in a recognizable form as early as the Roman period, and then despite the name, began to truly flourish during the Dark Ages. There were a great many Anglo-Saxon poems, from Beowulf to Dream of the Rood, to Seafarer, that were recited by minstrels and written down on vellum or parchment. After them came the Middle English poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and his contemporaries.
Once the Renaissance got underway, the English language was still not standardized, but as a great many people became literate, they began to use it in new and exciting ways. This led to William Shakespeare, widely held up as one of the greatest writers in all of human history, and contemporaries such as the Metaphysical poets. Dr. Johnson and the other dictionary writers (many of them poets) then standardized Modern English, and as the Industrial Age brought about the Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. More and more women had access to literature at this point, and had a chance to have their work seen. This leads us to our modern writers such as Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Jamaican-born Benjamin Zephaniah.
Truly knowing British culture means knowing them all! How many do you know by heart?
This is one of Alexander Pope's shortest poems, seen here in its entirety. It was engraved on the collar of a puppy given to his friend, the Prince of Wales.
Advertisement
This is from T. S. Eliot's poem, "The Wasteland".
Advertisement
This is from "Sailing to Byzantium" by W. B. Yeats.
Advertisement
This is from W. H. Auden's poem "Stop All the Clocks", written in honor of his dead lover.
Advertisement
This is from William Blake's poem, "Tyger", an ode to the beauty of tigers.
Advertisement
This is from "The Disappointment" by 17th century poet Aphra Behn.
Advertisement
This is from Jonathan Swift's very angry poem "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" about a woman who takes off her makeup, then her face, and so on.
Advertisement
This is from Rastafarian poet Benjamin Zephaniah's poem "The British", an ode to the melting pot of British culture.
Advertisement
This is from Scottish poet Rabbie Burns' poem, "Address to a Haggis". It's a very long poem about a meaty Scottish dish.
Advertisement
This is from Dylan Thomas' villanelle, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" about fighting against a premature or undeserved death.
Advertisement
This is from William Wordsworth's comedy poem "Goody Blake and Harry Gill" about a mean rich man who is cruel to an old widow and becomes cursed to never be warm again.
Advertisement
This is from Wendy Cope's poem "Engineers' Corner", about how there is no monument to engineers in Westminster Abbey, though there is one for poets.
Advertisement
This is from John Donne's creepy poem "The Apparition", about a man who blames a woman for rejecting him and thus resulting in his death, and threatens to stalk her from beyond the grave.
Advertisement
These are the opening lines of Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress"
Advertisement
This is from Roald Dahl's poem, "Dear Friends, We Surely All Agree", about the evils of chewing gum.
Advertisement
Slough is a town in England that frankly, isn't very nice. Poet John Betjeman wrote his poem "Slough" about it.
Advertisement
This is from "Napoleon III In Italy" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Advertisement
This is from Mark Beaufoy's poem "A Father's Advice", written to his son to encourage gun safety.
Advertisement
This is from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If", which is about how to be a man.
Advertisement
This is the entirety of the poem "Mrs. Icarus" by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. It's part of her book "The World's Wife" in which women in the lives of famous men are given the voice to comment on their situation.
Advertisement
This is the opening line of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem "Kubla Khan".
Advertisement
This is from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Walls" which is about how boundaries affect people's ability to get on with each other.
Advertisement
This is the opening line of Christina Rossetti's famous poem, "Remember", that is often read at British funerals.
Advertisement
This is the opening line of George Gordon, Lord Byron's utterly weird monodrama, "Maud".
Advertisement
This is from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous epic poem, "The Lady of Shalott".
Advertisement
This is from William Wordsworth's Romantic poem, "Daffodils".
Advertisement
This hails from probably the most famous sonnet of William Shakespeare, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
Advertisement
This comes from Alexander Pope's poem "Essay on Criticism", which is about how small time critics think they are more important than they are!
Advertisement
This comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's poem "Good Counsel".
Advertisement
This comes from John Milton's great poem "Paradise Lost", which he wrote to be the English language equivalent of epics like Homer's Odyssey.
Advertisement
This comes from the metaphysical poet John Donne, whose sonnet "Batter my heart" begins with these lines.
Advertisement
This is Wilfred Owens, the World War I poet, and hails from his powerful poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est", which means "it is sweet and proper".
Advertisement
This is from A. A. Milne and begins "In the corner of the bedroom is a great big curtain / Someone lives behind it but I don't know who!" Brownies are a little pixie-like creature that apparently live behind curtains.
Advertisement
John Keats' poem tells us that "La belle dame sans merci hath thee in thrall!"
Advertisement
In "Disobedience" by A. A. Milne, we learn that "James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, took good care of his mother, though he was only three."
Advertisement