Author! Author!

There are some lines of poetry that are quoted again and again. You have probably heard all of those listed here, but do you know who wrote them? There are four choices listed. Check the one you believe to be the author. You score one point for each correct answer; you lose one point for each incorrect answer. A score of 6 is good; 9 is excellent; and a score of 11 means you are a literary light.



  1. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,

    2. And burnt the topless towers of Illium?

    Ben Johnson

    Christopher Marlowe

    William Shakespeare

    John Fletcher

  2. Water, water, everywhere

    3. And all the boards did shrink;

    Water, water, everywhere

    Nor any drop to drink.

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Samuel Coleridge

    Edgar Allen Poe

    Emily Dickinson

  3. By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

    4. Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

    Here once the embattled farmers stood,

    And fired the shop heard round the world.

    Walt Whitman

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Francis Thompson

    G. K. Chesterton

  4. Listen, my children, and you shall hear

    5. Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

    On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

    Hardly a man is now alive

    Who remembers that famous day and year.

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Alfred Tennyson

    Walt Whitman

    Robert Browning

  5. Some for the Glories of This World; and some

    6. Sigh for the Prophet's paradise to come;

    Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,

    Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

    Omar Khayam

    Algernon Charles Swinburne

    George Meredith

    A. E. Housman

  6. The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

    7. In a beautiful pea-green boat:

    They took some honey, and plenty of money

    Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

    Robert Browning

    Edward Lear

    Alfred Tennyson

    Emily Bronte

  7. Let's contend no more, Love,

    8. Strive nor weep;

    All be as before, Love,

    --Only sleep!

    Emily Bronte

    Christina Rossetti

    Elizabeth Browning

    Robert Browning

  8. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

    9. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

    All mimsy were the borogoves,

    And the mome raths outgrabe.

    Ogden Nash

    Rudyard Kipling

    Lewis Carroll

    Robert Louis Stevenson

  9. Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans

    10. Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,

    The emptiness of ages in his face,

    And on his back the burden of the world.

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Francis Thompson

    Sir William Watson

    Edwin Markham

  10. I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

    11. And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

    Carl Sandburg

    John Masefield

    Wallace Stevens

    D. H. Lawrence
       

  11. In the room the women come and go

    12. Talking of Michelangelo.

    T. S. Eliot

    W. J. Turner

    Conrad Aiken

    D. H. Lawrence


    Click here for the answers

    Adapted from The Mammoth Book of Word Games (1993) Richard B. Manchester, Bristol Park Books, 386 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016