Read the following extracts and answer the questions that follow:

1. Oh, life me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

(a) What is the mood of the poet?

(b) What is his appeal to the west wind?

(c) What does the poet mean by ‘the thorns of life’?

2. The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

(a) What do spring and winter stand for?

(b) Which of the following emotions of the poet is expressed in these lines:

(i) optimism (ii) pessimism (iii) realism?

(c) Who will blow the trumpet of prophecy?

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Solution

1.

(a) The poet is in a melancholic mood.

(b) His appeal to the west wind is to be lifted up from the thorns of life.

(c) The thorns of life are the worries that prevent him from being free like the west wind.

2.

(a) Spring stands for good and peaceful times, and winter is the dark and difficult times that often come in one’s life.

(b) The emotion expressed in these lines is optimism.

(c) The west wind will blow the trumpet through the poet’s lips.

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Similar questions

Answer the following questions:

1. What season of the year is presented in the poem?

2. What will happen to the dormant seeds once the west wind’s sister blows her clarion?

3. What will happen as all the clouds are gathered by the wind? In line 23

4. Throughout stanza II, the poet describes the approaching storm and its elements that the west wind will bring. Describe the storm in your own words.

5. The blue Mediterranean lies calm all summer. What comes to waken it?

6. In lines 53-54, the poet has “(fallen) upon the thorns of life ….” He wishes he could be free of life’s burdens. Quote how he phrases his desire to escape the “thorns of life” in these lines.

7. In lines 55-56, the poet says he used to have strength like the west wind, but now how does he describe himself?

8. The last line of the poem is often quoted. What do you understand the line to mean— other than that one season follows another?

1. What do the following phrases mean to you? Discuss in class.

(i) Humid shadows

(ii) Starry spheres

(iii) What a bliss

(iv) A thousand dreamy fancies into busy being start

(v) A thousand recollections weave their air-threads into woof

2. What does the poet like to do when it rains?

3. What is the single major memory that comes to the poet? Who are the “darling dreamers” he refers to?

4. Is the poet now a child? Is his mother still alive?

Read the lines given below and answer the following questions:

(a) I cannot remember my mother

only sometimes is the midst of my play

a tune seems to hover over my playthings,

(i) What is the poet doing when he remembers his mother?

(ii) What reminds him of her?

(iii) When did his mother hum that song?

(b) When in the early autumn morning

the smell of shiuli flowers floats in the air

the scent of the morning service in the temple

comes to me as the scent of my mother.

(i) What happens in autumn which reminds the poet of his mother?

(ii) What do you think the poet’s mother did with the shiuli flowers?

(iii) What do you think would constitute “the scent of the morning service in the temple”?

1. What kind of place is Innisfree? Think about:

(i) the three things the poet wants to do when he goes back there (stanza I);

(ii) what he hears and sees there and its effect on him (stanza II);

(iii) what he hears in his “heart’s core” even when he is far away from Innisfree (stanza III).

2. By now you may have concluded that Innisfree is a simple, natural place, full of beauty and peace. How does the poet contrast it with where he now stands? (Read stanza III).

3. Do you think Innisfree is only a place, or a state of mind? Does the poet actually miss the place of his boyhood days?

Answer the following questions briefly.

(a) Why do you think the rich and powerful people get monuments and statues erected in their memory?

(b) Describe how the monuments and statues brave the ravages of time.

(d) The poet says that neither forces of nature nor wars can destroy his poetry. In fact, even godly powers of Mars will not have a devastating effect on his rhyme. What quality of the poet is revealed through these lines?

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