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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 narrator describes the "salt streams" as which of the following (l. 35)?
(a) Tossing.
(b) Churning.
(c) Seething.
(d) Flowing.

2. How many stressed / emphasized syllables occur in the opening comment of the poem, “I sing a true song of myself” (l. 1)?
(a) 5.
(b) 2.
(c) 3.
(d) 4.

3. What musician does the narrator claim to have heard (ll. 19-20)?
(a) The red cardinal.
(b) The wild swan.
(c) The clucking chicken.
(d) The tame goose.

4. Which of the following came from the north (l. 31)?
(a) Rain.
(b) Wind.
(c) Attack.
(d) Snow.

5. The narrator suggests that the seafarer of the title is which of the following (ll. 35-38)?
(a) The man in town.
(b) The narrator.
(c) His spirit.
(d) God.

Short Answer Questions

1. In line 30, “have often had to endure in my seafaring,” relative stress / emphasis falls on the first or only syllable of which of the following?

2. The phrase “in days of toil / I’ve often suffered troubled times, / hard heartache” (ll. 2-4) offers examples of which of the following?

3. In line 29, the description “proud and puffed up with wine” is a descriptor meaning which of the following?

4. In line 17, “hung with icicles of frost while hail flew in showers,” how many relatively stressed / emphasized syllables are present?

5. From which of the following does the narrator note the tern replies (l. 23)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What tone is set by the first 26 lines of the poem? How do they do so?

2. The poem opens with the narrator saying “I sing a true song of myself, / tell of my journeys” (ll. 1-2). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

3. Consider the symbolism of the seabirds the narrator catalogs (ll. 20-23). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in evoking it?

4. The narrator remarks that "That man does not know, / he whose lot is fairest on land, / how I, wretched with care, dwelt all winter / on the ice-cold sea in the paths of exile, / deprived of dear kinsmen, / hung with icicles of frost while hail flew in showers" (ll. 12-17). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

5. Consider the kenning for hail, “coldest of grains” (l. 33). How does the kenning construct meaning?

6. The opening passages of the poem has the narrator state that “in days of toil / I’ve often suffered troubled times, / hard heartache” (ll. 2-4). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

7. The narrator comments that “they compel me now, / my heart-thoughts, to try for myself / the high seas, the tossing salt streams; / my heart’s desire urges my spirit / time and again to travel, so that I might seek / far from here a foreign land” (ll. 33-38). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the comment?

8. The narrator remarks that “he who has tasted life’s joy in towns, / suffered few sad journeys, scarcely believes, / proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary, / have often had to endure in my suffering” (ll. 27-30). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?

9. The second sentence of the poem reads "Pinched with cold / were my feet, bound by frost / in cold fetters, while cares seethed / hot around my heart, hunger tore from within / my sea-weary mind" (ll. 8-12). Three things are put into juxtaposition. What are they, and what effect does the juxtaposition have?

10. The narrator remarks that “he who has tasted life’s joy in towns, / suffered few sad journeys, scarcely believes, / proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary, / have often had to endure in my suffering” (ll. 27-30). What tone is conveyed in the passage?

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