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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. The speaker of Part II of "The Dry Salvages" states that "the moments of" what "are likewise permanent"?
(a) Joy.
(b) Revelation.
(c) Time.
(d) Agony.

2. The last two lines of Part IV of "Little Gidding" state that "We only live, only suspire / Consumed by either" what or what?
(a) Truth or lies.
(b) Love or hate.
(c) Fire or fire.
(d) Water or fire.

3. "Our own past is covered," says the speaker of Part II of "The Dry Salvages," "by the currents of" what?
(a) Temporality.
(b) Others.
(c) Action.
(d) History.

4. With what does the speaker's old master leave him at the end of Part II of "Little Gidding"?
(a) An incommunicable sorrow.
(b) A kind of valediction.
(c) A company of nameless ghosts.
(d) A withering rose.

5. With regards to the past and future, right action is said to be what by the speaker in Part V of "The Dry Salvages"?
(a) Assurance of.
(b) Uncertainty about.
(c) Means to.
(d) Freedom from.

Short Answer Questions

1. What, in Part II of "Little Gidding," "Gapes at the vanity of toil, / Laughs without mirth"?

2. The speaker says in Part I of "Little Gidding" that "this is the nearest, in place and time, / Now and in England." To what is "this" the nearest?

3. The speaker's interlocutor in Part II of "Little Gidding" says that "next year's words await another" what?

4. What, in Part IV of "Little Gidding," "descending breaks the air"?

5. In what month would the auditor of the first part of "Little Gidding" find the hedges white again, "with voluptuary sweetness"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What characterizes the "gifts reserved for age" which the interlocutor of Part II of "Little Gidding" describes to the poem's speaker?

2. 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").

3. What is meant by the line, "You are not the same people who left that station," in Part III of "The Dry Salvages"?

4. What is signified by the statement, in the final part of "Little Gidding," that "the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time"?

5. What is significant about the speaker's discussion of the strangeness of the sea in relation to man, in Part I of "The Dry Salvages"?

6. What does the speaker mean in Part III of "The Dry Salvages" when he states that, "the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray / Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret"?

7. What is meant by the phrase, in Part V of "Little Gidding," "Every poem [is] an epitaph"?

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

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

10. What does the speaker mean by saying in Part V of "The Dry Salvages" that "to apprehend / The point of intersection of the timeless / With time, is an occupation for the saint"?

(see the answer keys)

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