1. Birches’ is a poem by American poet Robert Frost. First published in the August, 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly together with ‘The Road Not Taken‘ and ‘The Sound of Trees’ as ‘A Group of Poems’. It was included in Frost's third collection of poetry Mountain Interval, which was published in_______?
A:) 1915
B:) 1916
C:) 1917
D:) 1918
springline- Correct option: B:) 1916
2. Birches; It is one of Robert Frost's most anthologized poems. Along with other poems that deal with rural landscape and wildlife, it shows Frost as a nature poet. How many lines this poem has consisted ?
A:) 59
B:) 61
C:) 62
D:) 55
springline- Correct option: A:) 59
3. Frost once said ‘it was almost sacrilegious climbing a birch tree till it bent, till it gave and swooped to the ground, but that's what boys did in those days’. Frost's writing of this poem was inspired by another similar poem ‘Swinging on a Birch-tree’ by American poet ______?
A:) Langston Hughes
B:) Ezra Pound
C:) Lucy Larcom
D:) Marianne Moore
springline- Correct option: C:) Lucy Larcom
4. When the speaker (the poet himself) sees a row of bent birches in contrast to straight trees, he likes to think that some boy has been swinging them. He then realizes that it was not a boy, rather than the ______?
A:) Pre-winter
B:) spring
C:) winter storm
D:) ice storms
springline- Correct option: D:) ice storms
5. The truth strikes the speaker, he still prefers his imagination of a boy swinging and bending the birches. When freezing rain covers the branches with ice, which then cracks and falls to the snow-covered ground. The sunlight refracts on the ice crystals, making a brilliant display?
A:) stormy morning
B:) spring evening
C:) winter morning
D:) autumn evening
springline- Correct option: C:) winter morning
6. The speaker says he also was a swinger of birches when he was a boy and wishes to be so now. When he becomes weary of this world, and life becomes confused, he would like to go toward heaven by climbing a birch tree and then coming back again, because earth is the right place for_______?
A:) happiness
B:) nature
C:) emotion
D:) love
springline- Correct option: D:) love
7. when Frost describes the cracking of the ice on the branches, his selections of syllables create a visceral sense of the action taking place: ‘Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells / Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust — / Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away.’ This poem was written in ______?
A:) blank verse
B:) Free Verse
C:) Epigram
D:) concrete
springline- Correct option: A:) blank verse
8. Originally, this poem was called ‘Swinging Birches’, a title that perhaps provides a more accurate depiction of the subject. In writing this poem, Frost was inspired by his childhood experience with swinging on birches, which was a popular game for children in rural areas of ______?
A:) New America
B:) New England
C:) Scotland
D:) Africa
springline- Correct option: B:) New England
9. Frost's own children were avid ‘birch swingers’, as demonstrated by a selection from his daughter’s journal: ‘On the way home, i climbed up a high birch and came down with it and I stopped in the air about three feet and pap cout me’ What is the name of his daughter?
A:) Helen
B:) Lesley
C:) Anne
D:) Elinor Frost
springline- Correct option: B:) Lesley
10. Birches; In the poem, the act of swinging on birches is presented as a way to escape the hard rationality or ‘Truth’ of the adult world, if only for a moment. Which place where his imagination can be free ?
A:) heaven
B:) playground
C:) childhood
D:) paradise
springline- Correct option: A:) heaven
11. Birches; In fact, the narrator is not even able to enjoy the imagined view of a boy swinging in the birches. In the fourth line of the poem, he is forced to acknowledge the ‘Truth’ of the birches: the bends are caused by _______?
A:) summer storms
B:) winter storms
C:) wind
D:) snowfall
springline- Correct option: B:) winter storms
12. The freedom of imagination is appealing and wondrous, but the narrator still cannot avoid returning to ‘Truth’ and his responsibilities on the ground; the escape is only a temporary one. The poem is full of ambiguity and it has got a sense of_______?
A:) classic
B:) humor
C:) aesthetic
D:) emotional
springline- Correct option: C:) aesthetic
13. The speaker is not one who is ready to wait for the promise of afterlife. The love expressed here is for life and himself. This shows Frost's agnostic side where heaven is a fragile concept to him. This becomes clear when he says, ‘the inner dome of heaven had fallen’ What is the language of this poem?
A:) formal
B:) classical
C:) traditional
D:) conversational
springline- Correct option: D:) conversational
14. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie. His father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana, and his mother was a _______?
A:) Scottish immigrant
B:) Germanic immigrant
C:) American poet
D:) American Critic
springline- Correct option: A:) Scottish immigrant
15. Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were married at Lawrence, Massachusetts on December 19_________?
A:) 1895
B:) 1896
C:) 1897
D:) 1898
springline- Correct option: A:) 1895
16. Frost worked the farm for nine years while writing early in the mornings and producing many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved unsuccessful and he returned to the field of education as an English teacher at New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy from ________?
A:) 1905 to 1910
B:) 1906 to 1911
C:) 1907 to 1912
D:) 1904 to 1910
springline- Correct option: B:) 1906 to 1911
17. In 1912, Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield, a small town in Buckinghamshire outside London. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas a member of the group known as the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration for _____?
A:) Mending wall
B:) Fire and Ice
C:) Birches
D:) The Road Not Taken
springline- Correct option: D:) The Road Not Taken
18. In 1915, during World War I, Frost returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been published, and bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until ______?
A:) 1936
B:) 1938
C:) 1942
D:) 1946
springline- Correct option: B:) 1938
19. In 1924, he won the first of four Pulitzer Prizes for the book New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. He would win additional Pulitzers for Collected Poems in 1931, A Further Range in 1937, and A Witness Tree in ______?
A:) 1942
B:) 1943
C:) 1945
D:) 1945
springline- Correct option: B:) 1943
20. In 1921, Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he resided until 1927 when he returned to teach at Amherst. While teaching at the University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment at the university as a Fellow in ______?
A:) poetry
B:) Letters
C:) philosophy
D:) literary club
springline- Correct option: B:) Letters
21. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), the first Prime Minister of India, had kept a book of Robert Frost's close to him towards his later years, even at his bedside table as he lay dying. His poem ‘Fire and Ice‘ influenced the title and other aspects of George R. R. Martin's fantasy series _______?
A:) A Series of Ice and Fire
B:) A Series of Frost
C:) A Music of Ice and Fire
D:) A Song of Ice and Fire
springline- Correct option: D:) A Song of Ice and Fire
22. Frost was 86 when he read at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. Frost originally attempted to read his poem ‘Dedication’, which was written for the occasion, but was unable to read it due to the brightness of the sunlight, so he recited his poem from memory instead______?
A:) A witness Tree
B:) Christmas Trees
C:) Fire and Ice
D:) The Gift Outright
springline- Correct option: D:) The Gift Outright
23. When Frost accompanied Interior Secretary Stewart Udall on a visit to the Soviet Union in hopes of meeting Nikita Khrushchev to lobby for peaceful relations between the two Cold War powers in 1962?
A:) the winter
B:) the rainy
C:) snow day
D:) the summer
springline- Correct option: D:) the summer
24. Frost died in Boston on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes the last line from his poem: ‘I had a lover's quarrel with the world.’These lines were taken from one of the poem of Frost’s _______?
A:) The Lesson for Today
B:) Fire and Ice
C:) A Boy’s Will
D:) New Hampshire
springline- Correct option: A:) The Lesson for Today
25. Robert Frost; The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a small collection of his papers. The University of Michigan Library holds the Robert Frost Family Collection of manuscripts, photographs, printed items, and artwork. The most significant collection of Frost's working manuscripts is held by_____?
A:) Dartmouth
B:) New England
C:) Harvard university
D:) Vermont
springline- Correct option: A:) Dartmouth
26. The poet and critic Randall Jarrell often praised Frost's poetry and wrote: ‘Robert Frost, along with Stevens and Who, seems to me the greatest of the American poets of this century, Frost's virtues are extraordinary’’?
A:) Thomas Hardy
B:) W.B. Yeats
C:) T.S. Eliot
D:) Walt Whitman
springline- Correct option: C:) T.S. Eliot
27. an introduction to Jarrell's book of essays, Whose notes that ‘the 'other' Frost that Jarrell discerned behind the genial, homespun New England rustic—the 'dark' Frost who was desperate, frightened, and brave—has become the Frost we've all learned to recognize, and the little-known poems Jarrell singled out as central to the Frost canon are now to be found in most anthologies?
A:) Edward Thomas
B:) Henry Ford
C:) Brad Leithauser
D:) Helen Muir
springline- Correct option: C:) Brad Leithauser
28. The classicist Helen H. Bacon has proposed that Frost's deep knowledge of Greek and Roman classics influenced much of his work. Frost's education at Lawrence High School, Dartmouth, and Harvard ‘was based mainly on the _____?
A:) classics
B:) modern
C:) philosophic
D:) satiric
springline- Correct option: A:) classics
29. The critic Who focused on this bleakness in Frost's work, stating that ‘in much of his work, particularly in North of Boston, his harshest book, he emphasizes the dark background of life in rural New England, with its degeneration often sinking into total madness ?
A:) Harold Bloom
B:) T. K. Whipple
C:) Harriet Monroe
D:) Samuel Appleton
springline- Correct option: B:) T. K. Whipple
30. In sharp contrast, the founding publisher and editor of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, emphasized the folksy New England persona and characters in Frost's work, writing that ‘perhaps no other poet in our history has put the best of the Yankee spirit into a book so completely.’ She also notes that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often ______?
A:) satirical
B:) Philosophical
C:) Spiritual
D:) Epic
springline- Correct option: A:) satirical