1. “Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” Who is moved by the joys of the season?

   1. Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

   2. Great Uncle Bulgaria in The Wombles by Elisabeth Beresford

   3. Mole in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

   4. Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

2. “Nothing is so beautiful as spring- / When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush ... What is all this juice and all this joy?” Said which poet?

   1. Seamus Heaney

   2. Gerard Manley Hopkins

   3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

   4. Pam Ayres

3. How many daffodils did Wordsworth see, when he was wandering lonely as a cloud?

   1. 451

   2. 1,000

   3. 10,000

   4. 100,000

4. Whom is Shakespeare missing in Sonnet 98? “From you have I been absent in the spring / When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,/ Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing”?

   1. Anne Hathaway

   2. Christopher Marlowe

   3. A dark lady

   4. A fair youth

5. What are the first flowers that Edmund sees, as spring starts to bloom in the winter-locked land of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

   1. Celandines

   2. Snowdrops

   3. Daffodils

   4. Sunflowers

6. What flowers breed from the “dead land” in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, in which “April is the cruellest month”?

   1. Hyacinths

   2. Lilacs

   3. Crocuses

   4. Lupins

7. How does Pip describe the spring in Great Expectations?

   1. “The first soft touch of summer”

   2. “Summer in the light, and winter in the shade”

   3. “The welcome death of winter”

   4. “A time for whistling”

8. Who said that “The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase”?

   1. EB White

   2. JD Salinger

   3. Doris Lessing

   4. Philip Roth

9. Who has “spring fever” which “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”?

   1. Jo March, from Little Women

   2. Huckleberry Finn

   3. Updike’s Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom

   4. Titty, from Swallows and Amazons

10. Which is the real quote from Shelley?

    1. O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

    2. Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems

    3. Awake, thou wintry earth - / Fling off thy sadness!

    4. The year's at the spring / And day's at the morn

11. Finish this line from a Rainer Maria Rilke translation: “Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colours ...”

    1. "... a choir would be singing in the spring"

    2. "... the heavens themselves would tremble"

    3. "... there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night"

    4. "... the world would crumble at the sound"

12. What are the "shoores soote" of Chaucer's Aprille in his prologue to the Canterbury Tales?

    1. Sooty showers

    2. Sweet showers

    3. Sweet shores

    4. First shoots

Solutions

1:C, 2:B, 3:C, 4:D, 5:A, 6:B, 7:B, 8:A, 9:B, 10:A, 11:C, 12:B

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   You're clearly still in deep hibernation. Wake up!

2. 6 and above.

   Hmm. Something's stirring in the cold dark earth of your mind, but not much

3. 9 and above.

   Very promising, but do keep fertilising your mind by reading this website

4. 12 and above.

   Outstanding. Clearly a mind in full bloom