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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 techniques are evident in the phrase "Rebuffed the big wind" (line 7)?
(a) Personification and consonance.
(b) Euphony and personification.
(c) Consonance and assonance.
(d) Assonance and euphony.

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

3. What device is evident in line 10's "the fire that breaks from thee then"?
(a) Verbal irony.
(b) Apostrophe.
(c) Personification.
(d) Hyperbole.

4. What is the common name of the titular bird?
(a) Kestrel.
(b) Hawk.
(c) Osprey.
(d) Kite.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does line 10 say "Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume" do "here" (line 9)?

2. What is "sillion" (line 12)?

3. What is the bird the "dauphin" of (line 2)?

4. In lines 2-3, "in his riding/ Of the rolling level underneath him steady air," which word tells what the bird is "riding"?

5. Which word is enjambed at the end of line 1 and the beginning of line 2?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. 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)?

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

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

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 poetic form of "The Windhover."

(see the answer keys)

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