Extracts ( Poems) Hornbill Class 11 English

A Photograph Shirley Toulson 

A Read the given stanzas and answer the questions that follow:

“The cardboard shows me how it was
When the two girl cousins went paddling,
Each one holding one of my mother’s hands,
And she the big girl- some twelve years or so”

1. What does cardboard mean in this context?
A  A thick paper on which the poet’s photograph was pasted
B  A thick envelope
C  A thick piece of paper with a photo of the poet’s mother attached
D  A paper boat
2. What does the cardboard depict?
A A scenery
B The picture of a house
C The picture of a school
D The picture of three girls
3. Who is the big girl mentioned here?
A The poet herself
B The poet’s mother
C The poet’s relative
D The poet’s friend
4. In the picture, what are the three of them doing?
A  playing in the sand
B standing beside house
C holding hands
D holding hands and paddling

Answer 1.C. 2.D.  3.B 4.C

B Read the given stanzas and answer the questions that follow:

“All three stood still to smile 

through their hair
At the uncle with the camera.
A sweet face, My mother’s,
that was before I was born.
And the sea, which appears to have changed less.
Washed their terribly transient feet.

1. What does the phrase “smiling through their hair” signify in the poem?
A  The girls who were photographed had their hair decorated
B The photographed girls were wearing a mask
C When the girls were smiling for the camera, their hair was covering their faces.
D The hair of the girls in the picture was smiling as well
.

2. What has remained constant over time?
A The photo
B The cardboard
C The girls
D The sea
3. Identify a term in the extract that describes something as “lasting only briefly”?
A Still
B Transient
C Changed
D Less
4. What poetic device involving epithets was used in the poem?
A Terribly transient
B Through their
C Both wry
D Laboured ease

Ans 1.C  2.D  3.B  4.A

C Read the given stanzas and answer the questions that follow:

“Some twenty-thirty-years later
She’d laugh at the snapshot.
“See Betty And Dolly, she’d say, “and look how they
Dressed us for the beach
The sea holiday Was her past, mine is her laughter
Both wry With the laboured ease of loss.”

1. Why did she laugh?
A  Seeing the absurd dresses they were sporting while on holiday by the sea
B One of them cracked a joke
C Seeing the weird dresses they were wearing at the party
D Because they saw a funny man at the sea holiday
2. Who are Betty and Dolly?
A They are poet’s cousins
B They are poet’s friends
C They are poet’s mother’s friends
D They are poet’s mother’s cousins
3. The word ___________ in the extract is the synonym of photograph.
A Snapshot
B Picture
C Mine
D Laboured
4. What do you mean by the word ‘wry’?
A ironic
B cry
C sad
D None of the above

Answer 1. A.  2.D. 3.A 4.A

D Read the given stanzas and answer the questions that follow:

“Now she’s been dead nearly as many years
As that girl lived
And of this circumstance
There is nothing to say at all
Its silence silences”

1. Who does she refer to?
A  The poet’s dead aunt
B The poet’s dead mother
C The poet’s dead cousin
D The poet’s sister
2. Why is there nothing to be said regarding the poet’s mother’s passing?
A  The poet is perplexed
B When her mother passed away, the poet was not in her senses
C The death of the poet’s mother has left a deep void in the poet’s heart
D The poet and her mother did not get along well
3. The phrase “events that change your life, over which you have no control” is synonymous to which word in the extract?
A Silences
B Circumstances
C Situation
D Circumstance
4. What does the author feel in the last phase?
A  pain and grief
B happy and nostalgic
C sad and nostalgic
D pain and nostalgic

Answer 1B 2C 3D 4A

P-2 The Laburnum Top by Ted Hughes

Extracts 

A. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

The Laburnum top is silent, quite still
In the afternoon yellow September sunlight,
A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen.

Q1. At what time of the day does the poem open?
Q2. What is the condition of the Laburnum top?
Q3. What does the word ‘yellowing’ here mean?
Q4. Which season is suggested by the month of September?

Answer 1.Ans. The poem opens in the afternoon.

2.Ans. The Laburnum top is silent.

3.Ans. The word ‘yellowing’ means becoming yellow.

4.Ans. The season suggested by the month of September is autumn.

B. Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup
A suddenness, a startlement, at a branch end.
Then sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt,
She enters the thickness,

Q1 What effect is produced at the branch end with the sitting of the mother goldfinch bird on it?
Q2. Why is the mother goldfinch bird ‘alert’ while entering the thickness?
Q3. Which figure of speech is used to describe the movement of the mother goldfinch bird?
Q4. What does the word ‘twitching’ mean?

1.Ans. With the sitting of the mother goldfinch bird at the branch end a suddenness and a startlement are produced.

2.Ans. The mother goldfinch bird is ‘alert’ while entering the thickness because she does not want the enemies to know about the existence of the baby goldfinch birds there.

3.Ans. The figure of speech used to describe the movement of the mother goldfinch bird is “simile.”

Ans. The word ‘twitching’ means moving the body.

 

C. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

She enters the thickness, and a machine starts up
Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings —
The whole tree trembles and thrills.

Q1. How do the baby goldfinch birds react at the arrival of the mother goldfinch bird?
.

Q2. What is referred to here as ‘thickness’?
Q3. What does the word ‘thrills’ mean?
Q4. Why are the baby goldfinch birds looked upon as a machine?

Ans.1 The baby goldfinch birds are looked upon as a machine because they seem to have a start and stop mechanism like a machine.

Ans.2At the arrival of the mother goldfinch bird the baby goldfinch birds chatter, shake their bodies and even produce sounds of high notes

 Ans.3 The inner part of the Laburnum top in general and the branch on which the Goldfinch sits in particular is referred to here as ‘thickness’.

Ans.4The word ‘thrills’ means shakes violently.

D.Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

 It is the engine of her family.
She stokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end
Showing her barred face identity mask

Q1. What is referred to here as “the engine”?
Ans. The mother goldfinch bird is referred to here as “the engine”.

Q2. Where does the mother goldfinch bird flirt out?
Ans. The mother goldfinch bird flirts out to the end of a branch.

Q3. In which sense is the ‘face’ of the mother goldfinch bird ‘barred’?
Ans. The ‘face’ of the mother goldfinch bird is ‘barred’ in the sense that its face is dominantly yellow but has a black spot on it

Q4. What ‘masks’ the identity of the mother goldfinch bird?
Ans. The yellowing leaves and the yellow flowers ‘mask’ the ‘identity’ of the mother goldfinch bird.

E. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings
She launches away, towards the infinite
And the laburnum subsides to empty.

Q1. Towards what does the mother goldfinch bird launch away?
Ans. The mother goldfinch bird launches away towards the infinite.

Q2. What change do you find at the Laburnum top after the departure of the mother goldfinch bird?
Ans. After the departure of the mother goldfinch bird the Laburnum top becomes silent once again.

Q3. What does the word ‘whistle-chirrup’ mean?
Ans.The word ‘whistle-chirrup’ means the whistle-like sound produced by the mother goldfinch bird.

Q4. Why does the poet use the word ‘eerie’?
Ans. The poet uses the word ‘eerie’ because he fails to find out the idea the mother goldfinch bird is trying to convey through it.

Poem-3

The Voice Of Rain by Walt Whitman

A. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.
And who art thou? Said I to the soft falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here Translated:
I am the poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upwards to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether Changed, and yet the same.

Q1. What do you understand by the phrase ‘Strange to tell’?
Ans. The phrase ‘Strange to tell’ means that it is an unordinary and exceptional thing to receive an answer from the inanimate raindrops.

Q2.How has the answer been conveyed to us and what is it?
Ans. The poet has personified a raindrop to represent the response, and the personified rain drop responds to the poet’s question by claiming to be the “Poem of the Planet.”

Q3. Why does the rain call itself ‘eternal’?
Ans. The rain refers to itself as eternal since the rain’s formation process never ends.

Q4. Explain ‘vaguely formed’.
Ans. The term “vaguely formed” describes the development of clouds that are filled with rainwater vapour. Due to the lack of a distinct shape in these clouds, the rain takes on a vague appearance.

Q5. Explain ‘altogether Changed, and yet the Same.’
Ans. The phrase indicates that rain is formed by raindrops in the sky. As a result, although their form has changed, their essence has not.

B. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.
I descend to leave the droughts, Atomies, dust layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
And make pure and beautify it.
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns)

Q1. With what purpose does the rain descend from the sky?
Ans. To give life to the Earth, which is suffering from dryness and drought, raindrops fall from the sky.

Q2. How does the rain help the seeds?
Ans. The absence of water causes the seeds to be dormant and incapable of sprouting before it rains. Rain provides them with the water they require to germinate and grow into new plants.

Q3. Why has the poet compared the rain to a song?
Ans. The poet has equated the song’s life cycle to that of raindrops, claiming that both return to their source after finishing their duty. They both cure and beautify the Planet and the heart of Man during their trip, respectively.

Q4. Why are the last lines put within brackets?
Ans. The final lines are enclosed in brackets since neither the rain nor the poet can be heard in them. These just confirm a poet’s broad observation regarding the development of a song.

Q5. Where does the song return?
Ans. The song goes back to the spot where it started, i.e. to the poet’s heart.

C. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.
“And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,”

1. What is the difference between the two ‘I’ in the given lines?
A. One is of the poet and the other is of the rain
B. One is with love and other is with surprise
C. One asks the question and the other answers
D. Both A and C
2. The poet specifically says that the answer was given by ‘The Voice of the Rain’. The emphasis on the voice of rain adds a hint of ………… to the poem.
A. mystery
B. thrill
C. drama
D. doubt
3. What do you understand by the phrase ‘strange to tell’?
A. Unusualness of the answer for the poet
B. Stupidness of the answer for the earth
C. Ordinariness of the answer for the poet
D. Commonness of the answer for the raindrops

4. The two voices in the poem are those of the-
A. rain and the poet
B. Translator
C. Advocate of rain
D. Rain itself

Answer 

1.D

2.A

3.A
4.Ans. A. 

D. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.
“Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and yet the same,
I descend to lave the droughts, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;”

1. From where does the rain originate?
A. Clouds and land
B. Land and sea
C. Sky and sea
D. Sky and land
2. What happens to the raindrops in the sky?
A. They change their form
B. They evaporate to become air
C. They disappear from earth
D. Nothing
3. With what purpose does the rain descend from the sky?
A. To destroy crop
B. To flatter the poet
C. To entertain earth
D. To give life to the planet
4. What is ‘latent’ and ‘unborn’?
A. Flowers
B. Plants
C. Earth
D.Seeds
5. What quality of rain is highlighted in the extract?
A. Entertainer
B. Healer
C. Preserver
D. Caregiver

Answer.1. B

2. A

3. D

4.D

5.B

Poem-4;

Childhood by Markus Natten 

A. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

When did my childhood go?

Was it the day I ceased to be eleven. Was it the time I realised that Hell and Heaven, Could not be found in Geography, And therefore could not be, Was that the day!

Q1. When does a poet realise that his childhood has gone?

Ans. Poet becomes aware at the age of eleven.

Q2. Why is the age of eleven so important for the poet?

Ans. He can distinguish between fact and fiction around the age of eleven.

Q3. What is the quality acquired by the poet at this stage of his life?

Ans. At this point, the poet is starting to make sense.

Q4. When did the poet know that ‘hell’ and ‘heaven’ are imaginary concepts?
Ans. When he was unable to find these locations in his geography books.

Q5. Why is the poet worried?
Ans. The poet is concerned because he has lost his innocence.

Q6. Where has the poet’s childhood gone?
Ans. His formative years have vanished into obscurity.

Q7. What is a child’s perception of an adult?
Ans. The child can tell the difference between fact and fiction as they grow older.

B. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

When did my childhood go?
Was it the time I realised that adults were not
All they seemed to be,
They talked of love and preached of love,
But did not act so lovingly,
Was that the day!

Q1. Why does the poet not talk great of grown up people?
Ans. The poet believes that adults do not practise what they preach.

Q2.Why is the poet confused?
Ans. Poet is unable to distinguish between being a child and an adult.

Q3.What is the poet’s opinion about the people in the world?
Ans. Poet finds the people to be hypocrites.

Q4. Choose word from the passage which means ‘sermonized’.
Ans. Preached

C. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

When did my childhood go?
Was it when I found my mind was really mine,
To use whichever way I choose,
Producing thoughts that were not those of other people
But my own and mine alone
Was that the day!

Q1. Explain ‘My mind was really mine’?
Ans. That indicates that the poet had total self-control.

Q2. ‘Producing thoughts that were not these of other people’s means:
Ans. The poet now feels comfortable expressing his ideas on his own.

Q3. Which stage of life has been under consideration above?
Ans. The poet is transitioning into adulthood.

Q4. What thoughts of the poet are revealed in these lines?
Ans. His uniqueness is demonstrated here.

D. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

Where did my childhood go?
It went to some forgotten place,
That is hidden in an infant’s face,
That’s all I know.

Q1. Why is the poet eager to know the lost place of his childhood?
Ans. (i) The poet values childhood beyond everything else.
(ii) The poet wants to live a childlike, innocent life once more.
(iii) The poet is curious to discover the location of his early years.

Q2.Where is the poet able to find his lost childhood?
Ans. On the baby’s innocent face.

Q3. Choose a word from the passage which is synonymous to ‘concealed.
Ans. Hidden

Q4. What is the rhyming scheme of the above lines?
Ans. a b b a.

Poem-5

The Father To Son Elizabeth Jennings

A.Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

 I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small.

Q1. Who has lived in the same house? How long?
Ans. The father and son had shared the same home for a long time.

Q2. Why does the father say that he knows nothing of him?
Ans. They coexist in the same home as strangers. While they are with each other, there is complete silence all around them. He claims to know nothing about his son as a result.

Q3. What kind of relationship does he want to build up?
Ans. He hopes to have a bond with his son that is similar to the one he had with his son when he himself was younger.

B. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.

Q1. What does the word ‘seed’ signify?
Ans. The father’s labor-intensive efforts to raise the child are referred to as the “seed” here in this context.

Q2. What ‘land’ does the speaker speak of?
Ans. The father attempted to plant the seeds of his thoughts in the child’s mind.

Q3. Why do they speak like strangers?
Ans. People speak strangely because they have various outlooks and ways of thinking.

C.Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Silence surrounds us.
I would have him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.

Q1. What kind of child had he desired to design?
Ans. He had hoped to create a child that shared his preferences.

Q2. Why does the speaker say ‘this child’ not ‘my child’?
Ans. The speaker says ‘this child’ not ‘my child’ since they don’t share anything in common.

Q3. Explain: ‘Silence surrounds us’.
Ans. The father and son have almost no communication. When they are near each other, there is complete silence.

Q4. What does the father want his son to do?
Ans. He desires that his son visit his father again.

Q5. What is the father prepared to accept?
Ans. He is willing to accept his kid in all of his affluence.

Q6. What does the father not want his son to do?
Ans. The father does not want his son to create and settle in a new world of his own.

Q7. What would the father do to shape a new love from sorrow?
Ans. He would absolve his son of any suffering he may have caused.

D. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.

Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,

Q1. How does the poet feel when his relationship with his son comes under strain?
Ans. The poet is anxious to maintain the family links with his son. He desires that the son returns to his former home.

Q2. What could be the cause for their distancing from each other?
Ans. The growing gulf between the father and his son is due to a lack of understanding. Each is in need of the other, yet due to ego issues, they split apart.

Q3. What do both father and son long for?
Ans. They yearn for a reason to pardon one another.

Q4. What do the words ‘an empty hand’ signify?
Ans. The phrase “an empty hand” refers to the fact that neither the father nor the son have benefited from their current condition of separation. Both of them are empty handed.

Q5. What can’t the father understand?
Ans. The father is perplexed as to why his grief makes him angry.

Q6. Does the poem have a consistent rhyme scheme?
Ans. Yes, the rhyme scheme in each stanza is abbaba