Friday quiz: here comes the sun

I look out my window as I write these words and what do I see? Green. The leaves have returned to the trees. Down front, by the street, the hostas aren't up just yet, but certain other things whose names I don't know have begun their annual push out of the dark cold ground and up toward our side of the known world.

Yep, it's spring, I've been noticing. And I thought yesterday as I was pondering quiz topics for today, well, yes, spring – celebrated by poets and songwriters and you-name-its since time immemorial. So we will consider some of these metaphorical uses of the season, and a few more practical facts about it, but all in keeping with our animating idea of things an intellectually well-rounded person ought to know a little something about.

Personally, autumn is the season I like best, but I have to say that it's rather nice to hear the birds and see the flowers. Washington is, I have gathered, just about a perfect temperate zone for azaleas, and so everyone grows them, and in mid-to-late May you can drive around the suburbs of Washington and feast your eyes upon a canvas of blazing sharp reds and pinks and magentas and even I, not necessarily a horticultural enthusiast, am kind of blown away. So the season has its merits. Here we go.

1. Spring of course is associated with love. According to Roman mythology, Cupid, the god of desire, angered his mother (Venus) by falling in love with a mortal, Psyche. The marriage hit a bit of a snag because as a mortal, Psyche:
a. could not make love to Cupid
b. could not join him in the pantheon of gods for celebrations and festivals
c. was forbidden to look at him

2. Who wrote these lines:
WHEN that April is, with his showers swoot,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heath grove, forest
The tender croppes and the younge sun twigs, boughs
Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them nature in their corages); hearts, inclinations
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,...
a. Petrarch
b. Geoffrey Chaucer
c. Unknown

3. The following little poem called "Spring" is sung at the end of what Shakespeare play, after the four couples who have fallen in love part ways?:
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
a. Love's Labour's Lost
b. Cymbeline
c. Measure for Measure

4. The last of these four lines has become one of the most oft-quote lines in poetry. Who wrote this:
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
a. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
b. William Wordsworth
c. John Greenleaf Whittier

5. The phrase "spring fever" comes from what fictional character, who said: "It's spring fever, and when you've got it, you want – oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"
a. The Artful Dodger
b. Dorothea Brooke
c. Huck Finn

6. One more piece of poetry. Who wrote:
a. Franz Kafka
b. Rainer Maria Rilke
c. Emily Dickinson

7. In probably the most famous line of the Rogers and Hammerstein song "It Might as Well Be Spring," the singer sings:
"But I feel so gay
In a ________ way
That it might as well be spring."
a. Goofy kind of
b. Melancholy
c. Wishy-washy

8. The song that opens "Spring is here/The-e-e skies are blue" culminates in the vocalist doing what:
a. Goin' to the chapel
b. Plantin' all my daisies
c. Climbin' up the mountain of love

9. What sturdy plant with small yellow flowers, often planted along roadways, generally is the first bloomer of spring?
a. Amaryllis
b. Hydrangea
c. Forsythia

10. In April 1968, he launched an "action program" of reforms that included freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement:
a. Ho Chi Minh
b. Salvador Allende
c. Alexander Dubcek

11. This delicacy is available only briefly in the northern United States and Canada every spring; the name comes from the distinctive shape.
a. Fiddlehead ferns
b. Large-mouth ramps
c. Gooseneck onions

12. Today is Earth Day, intended to raise awareness of and appreciation for the environment. The first Earth Day took place in 1970, and it was the brainchild of:
a. Germaine Greer
b. US Senator Gaylord Nelson
c. Charles and Maurice Saatchi

Easy, right? Let's look.

1-c; 2-b; 3-a; 4-a; 5-c; 6-b; 7-b; 8-a; 9-c; 10-c; 11-a; 12-b.

1. I constructed the fakes so that, of the choices, c has the most mythological feel to it.
2. This week's gimme. The lines open The Canterbury Tales.
3. You had to know the plot of the play, which I admit I probably would not have.
4. Would not have known this. Learned something useful.
5. That usage of "fairly" was the tip-off.
6. And that is why I love Rilke! And that also is what modernism gave us, the urge to brood over the pastoral; to ask why and to doubt. I love it.
7. Easy to me, and I think a very well-known lyric, but if you didn't know it, "melancholy" might seem the least likely answer. It's also the most emotionally complex of the three choices, so that'll teach you to dismiss that music as saccharine.
8. "Chapel of Love," the Dixie Cups, 1964.
9. I learned this during our brief tenure as country land-owners.
10. Allende might have tripped some of you up, I was thinking, even though he wasn't in power yet. But it's in here because it was the Prague Spring, of course.
11. I hesitated here because I wasn't sure you had these in England and I wanted to be fair. I poked around online and saw that both Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson have recipes with them, so I figured it's fair. I hope maybe you don't call them something else and this isn't one of those arugula/rocket situations. Toss the question if so. By the way they look like this. Soooo delicious. Just saute in butter with salt and pepper, and garlic never hurts anything of course.
12. Who'da thunk it? A senator?? Yes. We had a better class of senators in those days, believe me. I thought putting in the admen was clever and might have thrown some of you off.

Tell us how you did, and tell us: your most treasured spring memories; anything special you're doing this spring, right now; spring poetry and song and literature and whatever that awakens something in you. I look forward to reading about it.

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