Poems in ‘Hornbill’ English Reader for Class 11 2016
Poems in Hornbill Reader for Class 11th
Poems are included to heighten students‘ sensitivity to literary writing and to
appreciate rhythm and sound patterns in language.
Follow these steps:
a) Read the poem aloud once without the students looking at the poem. Ask
them a few general questions.
b) Re-read the poem with the students looking at the poem. Ask a few more
questions to check comprehension.
c) Ask students to read the poem silently and answer the questions given, first
orally and then in writing
CONTENT
1. The Voice of the Rain
Walt Whitman
2. The Laburnum Top
By Ted Huges
2.1 Some other poem on a bird The Eagle, To the Cuckoo, Ode to a Nightangle,
3.
Childhood
Markus Natten
4. Father to Son
Elizabeth Jennings
5.
A Photograph
Shirley Toulson
The Voice of the Rain
Walt Whitman
And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
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Poems in ‘Hornbill’ English Reader for Class 11 2016
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,
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;
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.)
impalpable: something that cannot be touched
lave: wash; bathe
atomies: tiny particles
latent: hidden
Think it out
I. 1. There are two voices in the poem. Who do they belong to?
Which lines indicate this?
Answer The two voices in the poem belong to the poet and the rain. The first
two lines in the poem indicate this. They read ― And who art thou? Said I to
the soft-falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here
translated:‖ After this the poet indicates the answer of the light shower that had
spoken to him.
2. What does the phrase ―strange to tell‖ mean?
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Answer. The phrase ―strange to tell‖ conveys the astonishment of the poet at
hearing a response to his question addressed to the ― light falling shower.‖ The
shower of rain has no voice and does not talk to people. The poet is imagining
it to be talking to him, while it is his own imagination and thoughts about the
shower, that he is expressing in the poem. But to make his poem more credible
and dramatic, the poet has presented it as a dialogue between the poet and the
rain. This is indicated through the words : ‗as here translated:‘. The poet is
pretending to translate and interpret the reply of the rain as heard by him in his
imagination.
3. There is a parallel drawn between rain and music. Which words indicate this?
Explain the similarity between the two.
Answer. The words ―I am the Poem of Earth , ... 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.......‖ are the words that
indicate a parallel between rain and music. The similarity between the two is
that there is rising and falling of content and notes in both rain and music. The
melody in music rises and descends, just as rain rises in the form of water
vapour and falls as a shower of water.
4. How is the cyclic movement of rain brought out in the poem?
Compare it with what you have learnt in science.
Answer. In science we have learnt that due to heat of the Sun, the water from
the surface of the Seas and Oceans, rivers and lakes, gets converted into water
vapour, and rises into the sky. On reaching higher it cools and forms clouds. At
first these clouds are light and in separate blobs, floating lightly along with the
winds. As they come together, they become heavier and heavier, and turn into
grey clouds. These descend towards the Earth to rain.
The poem ―The Voice of the Rain‘ also depicts the same process poetically
and dramatically through a dialogue between the poet and the rain. . The voice
of the rain , as translated by the poet, says that ― I am the Poem of Earth, ...
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to
heaven, whence, vaguely form‘d , altogether changed, and the same, I descend,
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.... And forever, be day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and made
pure and beautify it;‖ In this way the cyclic movement of rain is brought out
in the poem.
5. Why are the last two lines put within brackets?
Answer. The last two lines are written in brackets because they are not a part of
the answer by ‗the voice of the rain.‘ The lines are an observation of the poet,
made on the answer by ‗the voice of the rain‘.
6. List the pairs of opposites found in the poem.
(a) ‗Upward to heaven, ..... and the bottomless sea‘.
(b) ‗Eternal I rise...... I descend to...‘
(c ) And forever, by day and night, ‗
(d) ‗Reck‘d or unreck‘d ‗
II. Notice the following sentence patterns. Rewrite the sentences in prose.
1. And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower.
Answer: The prose version of this line is: I asked the soft falling shower
of rain ‗who it was?‘
2. I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain.
Answer. The voice of the rain replied that it was ‗the Poem of the Earth‘.
3. Eternal I rise
Answer. The prose is : ‗I rise for ever‘.
4. For song…duly with love returns
For continuing the song of the Earth and life on Earth, I return as pure
water as a gift that is given with love.
III. Look for some more poems on the rain and see how this one is different
from them.
This is a nature poem celebrating the coming of the rain. Compare it with
other rain poems
Here is an extract from a poem of H. W. Longfellow on the effect of Rain
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―Flooded by rain and snow
In their inexhaustible sources,
Swollen by affluent streams
Hurrying onward and hurled
Headlong over crags,
The impetuous water- courses
Rush and roar and plunge
Down to the nethermost world.
Say, have the solid rocks
Into streams of silver been melted,
Flowing over the plains,
Spreading to lakes in the fields?
Or have the mountains, the giants,
The ice-helmed , the frost-belted,
Scattered their arms abroad;
Flung in the meadows their shields?
By H. G. Longfellow
POEM after Chapter 3
The Laburnum Top
By Ted Huges
The Laburnum top is silent, quite still
In the afternoon yellow September sunlight,
A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen.
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, and a machine starts up
Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings —
The whole tree trembles and thrills.
It is the engine of her family.
She stokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end
Showing her barred face identity mask
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Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings
She launches away, towards the infinite
And the laburnum subsides to empty.
Think it out
1. What do you notice about the beginning and the ending of the poem?
Answer. The beginning and the end of the poem are dominated by stillness
and silence. The ‗top is silent, quite still‘ ( First line ) and ‗subsides to empty (
last line)
2. To what is the bird‘s movement compared? What is the basis for the
comparison?
Answer. The bird is compared to a lizard. This is because the bird arrives with
‗A suddenness‘ and it is ‗sleek‘ ‗alert‘ and ‗abrupt‘ as a lizard.
3. Why is the image of the engine evoked by the poet?
Answer. When any machine engine starts, there is always some vibration,
some clatter and some noise. Similarly, when the bird enters the thickness of
the tree ―The whole tree trembles and thrills‖. There is a ‗tremor of wings‘, and
‗Of chitterings‘ and ‗trillings‘.
4. What do you like most about the poem?
Answer. The poem brings to life the picture and action that ensues when a
mother bird returns to her nest to feed her young one, on a lazy September
afternoon. The description is so vivid that the reader is able to ‗live through the
action‘ as clearly as witnessed by the poet. This photographic quality of the
poem is what I like the most about the poem.
5. What does the phrase ―her barred face identity mask‖ mean?
The face is the identity of every species of bird, animal or human beings. The
goldfinch bird with yellow feathers has two or three long dark coloured lines on
its face. The poet calls these dark lines on goldfinch‘s face as giving it a
‗barred face identity mask‘ that helps others to recognize the bird.
Note down
1. the sound words
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Answer. silent, twitching chirrup, chittering, trillings, eerie delicate whistle –
chirrup , whispering.
2. the movement words
Answer. ―quite still, suddenness, startlement, abrupt, tremor, trembles, thrills,
flirts, launches away
3. the dominant colour in the poem - is yellow. yellow September, yellowing
leaves, (yellow) goldfinch,
List the following
1. Words which describe ‗sleek‘, ‗alert‘ and ‗abrupt‘ = suddenness, startlement,
abrupt.
2. Words with the sound ‗ch‘ as in ‗chart‘ and ‗tr‘ as in ‗trembles‘ in the poem.
Answer. ‗Ch‘ sound words in the poem are chirrup, chittering, goldfinch,
branch, twitching,
‗Tr‘ sound words in the poem are tremor, tree, trembles,
3. Other sounds that occur frequently in the poem are – delicate whistle,
whispering, eerie, flirts,
Thinking about language
Look for some other poem on a bird or a tree in English or any other language.
THE EAGLE
by Alfred Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring‘d with the azure world , he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
By John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as thought of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
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―Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,That thou, light –winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
( Stanza 1 of 8)
TO THE CUCKOO
by William Wordsworth
O BLITHE Newcomer ! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo ! shall I all thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass
At once far off and near.
Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome , darling of Spring!
Even yet thou are to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove
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Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope , a love;
Still longed for, never seen.
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen , till I do beget
That golden time again.
O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial , faery place;
That is fit home for Thee!
TO AUTUMN
By John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruits the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss‘d cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o‘er-brimme‘d their clammy cells.
( Stanza 1 of 3)
3. CHILDHOOD
By Markus Natten
When did my childhood go?
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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!
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!
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!
Where did my childhood go?
It went to some forgotten place,
That‘s hidden in an infant‘s face,
That‘s all I know.
Think it out
1. Identify the stanza that talks of each of the following.
a) Individuality : is in stanza three, where the poet finds that his mind
was his own and could be used whichever way he chose, to produce his
own thoughts for himself.
b) Rationalism : is in stanza one where he realises that Heaven and Hell
could not be located on a map in Geography, and therefore they could not
be places existing on Earth.
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c) Hypocrisy : is in stanza two , in which the child observes that adults
are not in reality what they seem to be. They say one thing to the child
and do quite another for themselves.
2.What according to the poem is involved in the process of growing up?
Answer.
According to the poem, growing up involves application
of one‘s mind to test the beliefs and stories one has heard as a matter of
faith, and has taken them on face value. This process includes becoming
rational, and seeking prove in tangible things or scientific principles. It
involves questioning what one has heard from elders and observing if that
is true. Finally, it involves realising that one‘s own mind belongs to
oneself and it can be used for one‘s own thoughts and beliefs rather than
for beliefs of others.
3.What is the poet‘s feeling towards childhood?
Answer. The poet feels that childhood lies in the innocence of believing and
trusting all that a child hears and sees. A child believes all that its elders
tell him to be true, and sees glory in places where it does not actually
exist. This trusting and believing characteristic of a child is the childhood.
This trust begins to chip away once the child crosses the age of ten, and
begins to apply his learning, in a rational way. He begins to question
4. Which do you think are the most poetic lines? Why?
Answer. The most poetic lines in this poem are in the last stanza :
Where did my childhood go?
It went to some forgotten place,
That‘s hidden in an infant‘s face,
That‘s all I know
These are most poetic because through them the poet has involved every child
in his own experience of childhood , that has widened his canvas. It has placed
his childhood in ‗an infant‘s face‘ to make it ‗eternal‘. So long as there are
infants, the poet‘s childhood would lie hidden and forgotten in the face of
every infant.
This conversion of personal experience into a universal
experience, makes the last stanza, the most poetic part of this poem.
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Chapter 8
Father to Son
Elizabeth Jennings
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. 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.
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.
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.
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We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.
Think it out
1. Does the poem talk of an exclusively personal experience or is it fairly
universal?
Answer.
The poem talks of a fairly universal experience. When a child is
growing up the father is too busy with his work and profession to find time
for his child. In old age, when the father has free time, the son gets too
involved and busy with his own life to spare any time for his aged father.
This cycle is universal and both merely complete a formality of meeting each
other , occasionally , with ‗an empty hand‘ .
2. How is the father‘s helplessness brought out in the poem?
Answer.
The father‘s helplessness is brought about through lines such as
‗Silence surrounds us‘. I do not understand this child , / Though we have lived
together now / In the same house for years‘. ‗He speaks: I cannot understand /
Myself, why anger grows from grief‘. ‗What he loves I cannot share‘. ‗I know
/ Nothing of him,‘ . The helplessness of the father is at his son being a like a
total stranger to him , and both put out an empty hand to complete the formality
of saying goodbye, as the son leaves.
3. Identify the phrases and lines that indicate distance between father and
son.
Answer. I do not understand this child , / Though we have lived together
now / In the same house for years‘. ‗He speaks: I cannot understand /
Myself, why anger grows from grief‘. ‗What he loves I cannot share‘. ‗I
know / Nothing of him,‘ Silence surrounds us‘- all these phrases and lines
indicate the distance between father and son.
4. Does the poem have a consistent rhyme scheme?
Answer.
Yes, it has a rhyme scheme consistent for an open verse
format. Short sentences are juxtaposed with longer sentences to create its
rhyme.
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A Photograph
Shirley Toulson
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.
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.
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.
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. Infer the meaning of the following words from the context
Paddling: is going for a picnic or re-creation, on a rowing boat. This could be
either in a sea shore or a large lake or a river. In the poem it is in the sea.
Transient: an experience or an event that is for a very short duration. In the
poem the word is used to describe the few moments when the sea was washing
the feet of two cousins . It is called ‗their terribly transient feet‘ as the girls
were about twelve years old, trying to get off the boat, on to the shore, and their
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feet were in the sea water for the brief time from their stepping down from the
boat to walk towards the beach.
Additional comment:
At twelve years of age, different parts of the body
grow very rapidly, and feet in particular grow fully all at once. So even if the
girls were to return for paddling in the subsequent year, they would have been
older, and the structure of their feet would have changed by then. The sea water
would then be washing different feet of an older person and not the same feet
that it was washing at that moment. This is also the ‗terrible transient‘.
1. What does the word ‗cardboard‘ denote in the poem? Why has this word
been used?
Answer.
The word ‗cardboard‘ is used for an old photograph of
the poet‘s mother when she was about twelve years of age, and had gone
paddling for the first time along with her cousin, and uncle. This word
has been used because earlier photographs were mostly pasted on
cardboard pieces to preserve them for long, and to prevent them from
bending or getting torn out at the corners. This was because photo frames
did not exist at the time when cameras were not common.
2. What has the camera captured?
Answer.
The camera has captured the ‗transient past‘ of a childhood
experience. It has enabled it to be preserved it as a memory long after
the persons in the photograph have grown up or are no more.
3. What has not changed over the years? Does this suggest something to
you?
Answer. The sea and its waters have not changed over the years. This
suggests the permanence of Nature and the transience of life .
4. The poet‘s mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this laugh indicate?
Answer. The laugh of the mother indicates the unsaid sense of loss of
childhood and of her youth. Her laugh had a touch of weariness at
recalling the memories of her childhood.
5. What is the meaning of the line ―Both wry with the laboured ease of
loss.‖
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Answer. The line is referring to the sea holiday memory of childhood for
the mother which was her pasts as captured in the photograph. The
mother‘s laugh was weary with the pain of her loss of childhood . For the
poet, the photograph was not the past of her mother‘s childhood, but the
weary laughter of her mother that she had heard when she showed that
photograph to her daughter, the poetess. This is because the mother had
died twelve years ago, which was her age at the time the photograph was
clicked.
6. What does ―this circumstance‖ refer to?
Answer. ‗This circumstance‘ refers to the death of the mother twelve years
ago. The poetess feels so weary at the loss of her mother that she does not want
to say anything about the ‗circumstances ‗in which her mother died. This is
because the silence that she experienced on knowing of her death, has silenced
the poetess. It has left such a void in her life that she prefers to remain silent
about ‗this circumstance‘.
7. The three stanzas depict three different phases. What are they?
Answer. The first phase is of the mother‘s childhood when she had gone for
her first sea boat paddling and the photograph was taken.
The second phase is of the mother showing the photograph to her
daughters. The third phase is of the daughter recalling her mother‘s ‗weary
laughter‘ at the time of showing the photograph. The mother had died about
twelve years ago , which ironically was her age in that photograph.
The daughter describes the third phase as ―Its silence silences‘, and
does not wish to talk about the circumstances in which her mother had died.
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