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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "The Gift Outright," Lines 1-16.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In line 15, what is the speaker calling "unstoried, artless, unenhanced"?
(a) The American people.
(b) The American land.
(c) The wars fought to secure land.
(d) The history of the United States.

2. What technique is used in line 10, "We were withholding from our land of living"?
(a) Personification.
(b) Alliteration.
(c) Metonymy.
(d) Paradox.

3. What technique is used in the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?
(a) Apostrophe.
(b) Assonance.
(c) Asyndeton.
(d) Euphemism.

4. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?
(a) By finding the courage to fight England.
(b) By fully surrendering ourselves to the land.
(c) By dedicating ourselves to the Christian God.
(d) By realizing our own weakness.

5. What does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?
(a) The land Americans live on.
(b) Freedom from England.
(c) Americans themselves.
(d) Surrender and salvation.

Short Answer Questions

1. What techniques are used in the lines "Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,/ Possessed by what we now no more possessed" (lines 6-7)?

2. Which is the primary definition of "still" being used in the expression "still colonials" in line 5?

3. What technique is used in the lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?

4. Which technique is used in the first line, "The land was ours before we were the land’s"?

5. To what event does the phrase "more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" obliquely refer?

(see the answer key)

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