Oh, for a Muse of Fire...

Today is National Poetry Day, and as I won the it last year, I'm having to set a little quiz on poetry for the guys at the office; and I'm posting it here for the hell of it. As the theme is Britain, almost all of the questions are on the works of poets writing in this country, the exceptions being some of the Classical section. To make up for that, a couple of the questions relate to very local events indeed.

Ten fairly straightforward questions, and a couple of obscure ones to stretch you, and bring the count up to a round dozen in three sets of four.

Answers tomorrow.

Classical (Before the fall of Constantinople)

1. Dante and Aeneas are linked by a person and a place. Who? And where?
2. Who was the Golden Ass?
3. "Mind must be the firmer, heart the more fierce, courage the greater, as our strength diminishes..." Who died, and his body later buried at Ely?
4. Where in the Divine Comedy does Dante explain that surface brightness of an extended source is unvarying with distance?

Tudor to Victorian

1. "Thou art more lovely and more temperate" than what?
2. If the Lamb is Innocence, what beast is Experience?

3.     "There was a naughty boy
        And a naughty boy was he,
        For nothing would he do
        But scribble poetry"
   
   

   - Whose self-assessment?
4. Who was the Red Cross Knight, and where did King Arthur meet him?

Modern (20th century)

1. What is done in Madingley on Christmas Eve?
2. If "London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down" by the end, what is cruel at the start?
3. Who tells you "That's the way things are."
4. If one invented a cure for the common cold, what other cure would be required?