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ELA 7

English Language Arts 7 · Worksheets

Poetry and figurative language

Ten questions of mixed difficulty, covering Poetry. Print it, or work through it on screen — the answer key starts on its own page.

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Poetry and figurative language

English Language Arts 7 · maddyhelps.com

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Circle the best answer for each question. Use the space to note the evidence or reasoning that decided it.

  1. What is the rhyme scheme of this stanza? (/ marks a line break) “The snow came down all Friday night / and buried every street. / By morning, all the town was white / and silent at our feet.”

    1. a) ABAB
    2. b) AABB
    3. c) ABCB
    4. d) ABBA

  2. Read these lines from a poem (/ marks a line break): “Rain went pitter-pat on the tin roof, / and the drainpipe gurgled all night.” The words “pitter-pat” and “gurgled” are examples of

    1. a) alliteration
    2. b) onomatopoeia
    3. c) rhyme
    4. d) simile

  3. Which line from a poem uses a simile?

    1. a) Fine frost formed on the front window.
    2. b) The frost was white lace across the window.
    3. c) The frost spread across the window like lace.
    4. d) The frost crept across the window at night.

  4. Read (/ marks a line break): “Everyone went in for supper. / The field went dark. / I stayed out, / alone.” Putting “alone” on a line by itself mainly

    1. a) speeds up the ending so the poem finishes quickly
    2. b) makes the reader pause on the word, so it stands out
    3. c) shows that the speaker went in for supper too
    4. d) makes “alone” rhyme with the word “dark” above it

  5. Which sentence uses personification?

    1. a) The children laughed as they chased the ball across the yard.
    2. b) The dog waited by the door for the family to come home.
    3. c) The cat yawned and stretched out in a patch of warm sun.
    4. d) The old house sighed as the family carried out the last box.

  6. A student wants this to be a haiku (/ marks a line break): “The wind is blowing / across the empty schoolyard / the swings move by themselves.” What needs to change?

    1. a) The last line has six syllables and needs five.
    2. b) The poem needs a fourth line to finish the idea.
    3. c) The lines need to rhyme at the end, like a song.
    4. d) The middle line has too many syllables in it.

  7. Read: “My grandmother's kitchen was a harbour. We came in from school, from the cold, from bad days, and stayed there until we were ready to go out again.” The metaphor suggests that the kitchen was

    1. a) a busy place full of noise and people
    2. b) a safe place to rest and feel better
    3. c) a place the children could not leave
    4. d) a room that looked out over the water

  8. Read (/ marks a line break): “The river slid past the willows, wide and brown and easy, / turning slow circles under the bridge, / carrying leaves along as if it had all summer. / Then — / the falls.” The poet ends with two very short lines mainly to

    1. a) make the ending feel calm and peaceful, like the river before
    2. b) show that the river is getting slower and wider near the end
    3. c) make the reader stop short, the way the river suddenly drops
    4. d) make the last line rhyme with the first line of the poem

  9. Compare two versions. Version 1: “Run, run, run to the end of the dock, / and jump!” Version 2: “I ran as fast as I possibly could all the way to the end of the dock, and then I jumped off.” What does the rhythm of Version 1 do that Version 2 does not?

    1. a) It tells the events in a clearer and more careful order.
    2. b) It uses rhyme to make the lines easier to remember.
    3. c) It gives the reader more details about the dock and the water.
    4. d) Its short, strong beats make the moment feel fast and exciting.

  10. A poem about rain is printed with its words trailing down the page in thin, broken lines, like falling drops. Why did the poet arrange it this way?

    1. a) so that the short lines will rhyme with each other
    2. b) so the poem will have exactly seventeen syllables
    3. c) so the shape on the page shows what the poem is about
    4. d) so the reader can read it faster from top to bottom

Answer key · Poetry and figurative language

English Language Arts 7 · maddyhelps.com

  1. a) ABAB — “Night” and “white” rhyme (lines 1 and 3), so both get A; “street” and “feet” rhyme (lines 2 and 4), so both get B. AABB would need neighbouring lines to rhyme, and ABCB misses that the first and third lines rhyme too.
  2. b) onomatopoeia — Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it names; you can almost hear the rain and the drainpipe. The two words do not start with the same sound, so they are not alliteration, and nothing is being compared, so there is no simile.
  3. c) The frost spread across the window like lace. — A simile compares two things using “like” or “as”: frost like lace. “Was white lace” makes the same comparison without “like,” so it is a metaphor; “crept” is personification, and the repeated f sound is alliteration.
  4. b) makes the reader pause on the word, so it stands out — A line break is a small pause, and a word with a line all to itself gets the reader's full attention, so the poem ends on the feeling of being alone. “Dark” and “alone” do not rhyme, and “I stayed out” shows the speaker did not go in.
  5. d) The old house sighed as the family carried out the last box. — Personification gives human actions to something that cannot really do them, and a house cannot sigh. Cats really yawn and dogs really wait, so those sentences are literal; students often pick them because animals are not human, but the test is whether the action is real.
  6. a) The last line has six syllables and needs five. — A haiku has three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. The first two lines are right, but “the swings move by themselves” has six, so one syllable has to go (“swings move by themselves” works). Haiku do not need to rhyme, which is the most common wrong idea about them.
  7. b) a safe place to rest and feel better — A harbour is where boats shelter from rough water until they are ready to sail again, and the kitchen does the same for the children after cold and bad days. Reading the metaphor literally leads to the water view; the comparison is about what the place does, not what it looks like.
  8. c) make the reader stop short, the way the river suddenly drops — The long, flowing lines move like the easy river, and then the rhythm breaks off at the dash, just as the river drops over the falls. Short lines can slow a poem down, which tempts readers toward “calm,” but here the change in rhythm matches a sudden change, not a peaceful one.
  9. d) Its short, strong beats make the moment feel fast and exciting. — “Run, run, run” hits three strong beats in a row, and the short last line lands like the jump itself. Version 2 actually has more words and details, and Version 1 does not rhyme (“dock” and “jump” do not), so those answers do not fit it.
  10. c) so the shape on the page shows what the poem is about — This is a concrete, or shape, poem: the way the words sit on the page is part of the meaning, so the reader sees the rain falling as well as reading about it. Short lines do not have to rhyme, and counting syllables belongs to forms like haiku, not shape poems.