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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What do the passengers watch widen behind them on the "deck of the drumming liner" in Part III of "The Dry Salvages"?
(a) The furrow.
(b) The horizon.
(c) The station.
(d) The rails.

2. The speaker states in Part III of "Little Gidding" that "It is not to ring the bell backward / Nor is it an incantation / To summon the spectre of a" what?
(a) Ghost.
(b) Rose.
(c) Truth.
(d) God.

3. The speaker of Part III of "The Dry Salvages" states that there is a voice descanting what?
(a) The opprobrius invective.
(b) The promontory knives.
(c) The murmuring shell of time.
(d) The recession of fecundity.

4. In addition to the life of the present individual and his peers, the speaker says in Part II of "The Dry Salvages" that "the past experience revived in the meaning / Is not the experience of one life only," but of whom?
(a) Many generations.
(b) Posterity.
(c) The eternal.
(d) Antiquity.

5. The third part of "Little Gidding" says that Sin is what?
(a) Impressive.
(b) Behovely.
(c) Inexpedient.
(d) Homely.

Short Answer Questions

1. The old master whom the speaker encounters states that he is not "eager to rehearse" what in Part II of "Little Gidding"?

2. According to the speaker of "Little Gidding," history may be either freedom or what?

3. The speaker tells his auditor in the first part of "Little Gidding" that "If you came this way... At any time or at any season... you would have to put off" what?

4. Into what are the "tongues of flame" said to be enfolded in the last lines of the poem, found in "Little Gidding"?

5. The final portion of Part IV of "The Dry Salvages" sees the speaker implore prayer on behalf of those who end "wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's" what?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain what is meant by the paradoxical statement in Part V of "The Dry Salvages," "music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all."

2. What is meant in Part III of "Little Gidding" by "not less of love but expanding / Of love beyond desire, and so liberation / From the future as well as the past"?

3. What is the "real destination" of the sailors, as described at the end of Part III of "The Dry Salvages"?

4. What does the speaker mean when he states, in the last part of "The Dry Salvages," that "Here the impossible union / Of spheres of existence is actual"?

5. With whom does the speaker of Part II of "Little Gidding" converse, and what is their relationship to one another, on the literal level?

6. Summarize the significance of the discussion of the past in Part II of "The Dry Salvages" (beginning with "It seems, as one becomes older" and ending with "Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror").

7. What is meant by saying in the final part of "Little Gidding" that "history is a pattern / Of timeless moments"?

8. What is the meaning of "Behovely" as it is used in the phrase, found in Part III of "Little Gidding" that, "Sin is Behovely"?

9. How can one be "redeemed from fire by fire," as is stated in Part IV of "Little Gidding"?

10. What is meant by the speaker's interlocutor's phrase that "next year's words await another voice" in Part II of "Little Gidding"?

(see the answer keys)

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