English Literature - ...

About the poem

A.  Read to understand

Answer these questions.

1. By ‘foreign’, the poet means something that is

a)   not real.           b) unfamiliar.           c) far off.

 

2. Make a list of all that the child poet sees on climbing up the cherry tree?

 

3. Pick out the lines that suggest the river reflects the sky.

 

4. What kind of river would you call ‘grown-up’?

 

5. Why does the child poet wish for a ‘higher tree’?

 

6. What kind of place does the child poet imagine in the last stanza?

 

7. Do you think the child poet lived a very sheltered and protected life, with little freedom? Give reason(s) for your answer.

 

 

B.  Discuss

 

1.   The child’s sense of adventure makes him climb the cherry tree. What would you do to seek adventure?

 

2.   Children, in the poet’s time, used to climb trees and play in the open. In what ways do you think the activities of children today are different from those in the past?

 

3.   The poet recalls the joys of his childhood in the poem. Share with the class what you enjoyed doing most when you were younger. Also, share what is it that you enjoy doing most today?

 

 

C.  Read to appreciate

Read the last words in each line of the first stanza of the poem. You can see that the last words in the first two lines and the last words in the third and fourth lines form two pairs of rhyming words. Now, read the last words in each line of the other stanzas. Do you observe the same pattern throughout? This pattern is the rhyme scheme of the poem.

1. Study the rhyme schemes of the poems you have read so far in this book and write them here.

     a)   Problem solving   __________

     b)   Missed   __________

     c)   A Spaceship Landed Over There  __________

     d)   Little by Little    __________

     e)   The brook   __________

Now, read these lines from the poem.

      I saw a dimpling river pass

      And be the sky’s blue looking-glass

In these lines, the poet says the river, by reflecting the blueness of the sky, becomes a ‘looking-glass’. Here, two unlike things (river and looking glass) are being treated as one, having the similar quality of reflection. Such a comparison is called a metaphor.

We can compare the river and the looking glass in another way. We can say that ‘the river is like a looking glass’. This type of comparison is called a simile.

2. Identify whether the comparisons in these lines are similes or metaphors. One has been done for you.

     a)   It is raining cats and dogs.                                         _______________

     b)   Her eyes were fire in rage.                                         _______________

     c)   She was a tigress on the battlefield.                            _______________

     d)   He behaved like a complete stranger.                          ________________

     e)   He is the apple of his mother’s eye.                             ________________

     f)    The fur was like silk-soft and smooth.                          ________________

     g)   They are as alike as two peas in a pod.                        ________________

     h)   The teacher showered him with praise.                        ________________

     i)     The answer to the problem is as clear as crystal.           ________________

     j)    The room was a furnace on the hot summer day.          ________________