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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 would it mean to have "Rebuffed the big wind" (line 7)?
(a) To have brushed against its force and been knocked back.
(b) To have used rapid movements to shine or polish it.
(c) To have stood up to and turned away its advance.
(d) To have abruptly and rudely responded to it.

2. What does line 10 say "Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume" do "here" (line 9)?
(a) Buckle.
(b) Break.
(c) Stir.
(d) Soar.

3. Which word is enjambed at the end of line 1 and the beginning of line 2?
(a) Morning.
(b) Kingdom.
(c) Minion.
(d) Daylight.

4. What does the word "wimpling" literally mean in the context of line 4?
(a) Rippling.
(b) Muffling.
(c) Covering.
(d) Like a nun's habit.

5. Who is the author of "The Windhover"?
(a) Gerard Manley Hopkins.
(b) Christina Rossetti.
(c) Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
(d) Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is the volta of "The Windhover"?

2. What type of rhyme is seen in the poem's "B" lines"?

3. Which techniques are evident in the phrase "dapple-dawn-drawn" (line 2)?

4. What type of rhyme is seen in the poem's "A" lines?

5. What technique is employed in the poem's final two lines, "blue-bleak embers, ah my dear/ Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What makes a creature like the windhover an appropriate symbol for Christ?

2. Describe the poetic form of "The Windhover."

3. What is a "windhover," and what characteristic of its flight is focused on in this poem?

4. What is the relationship of the expression "in his riding/ Of the rolling level underneath him steady air" (lines 2-3) to the later reference to "the rein of a wimpling wing" (line 4)?

5. How do the images in the last three lines support the idea that there is "no wonder" in the kestrel's fight (line 9)?

6. In "The Windhover," who is speaking, and what moves him to speak?

7. What is the meaning of the simile contained in lines 6 and 7: " As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding/ Rebuffed the big wind"?

8. What are the literal and figurative meanings of the poem's references to a "dauphin" and a "chevalier"?

9. What Christian paradox is expressed when the speaker refers to the bird as both a "minion" and a "dauphin" (lines 1-2)?

10. Describe the relationship of the content in the poem's final six lines to the content in lines 1-8.

(see the answer keys)

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