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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 7 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which term most accurately describes the meter of "The Gift Outright"?
(a) Heroic verse.
(b) Free verse.
(c) Ballad meter.
(d) Blank verse.

2. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?
(a) Farmers.
(b) Colonists.
(c) Americans.
(d) Revolutionaries.

3. What is alluded to in the phrase "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?
(a) The American Civil War.
(b) The Westward expansion of the United States.
(c) The Louisiana Purchase.
(d) The forced resettlement of Native peoples.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What techniques are used in the lines "She was ours/ In Massachusetts, in Virginia" (lines 3-4)?

2. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?

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

4. 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)?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the poem's title.

2. What does the speaker mean by "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?

3. Describe the form of "The Gift Outright."

4. What does the speaker claim makes the colonists "weak," and what is the solution to this weakness (line 8)?

5. Explain the synecdoche in line 4, "In Massachusetts, in Virginia."

6. What is implied by the diction the speaker uses to describe the lands yet to be conquered by American settlers: "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?

7. To whom is it implied the pronouns "our" and "we" refer in this poem?

(see the answer keys)

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