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”?

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Solution

(a) (i) The poet is playing when he remembers his mother.

(ii) His toys remind him of her.

(iii) His mother used to hum that song while rocking his cradle.

(b) (i) In autumn, the smell of shiuli flowers floating in the air reminds the poet of his mother.

(ii) The poet’s mother used the flowers for prayers.

(iii) The scent of the morning service would consist of incense, sandalwood and shiuli flowers.

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Similar questions

Answer the following questions:

(a) Why do you think the poet does not remember his mother?

(b) How old is the poet at the time of his mother’s death? Give reasons to support your answer.

(i) Only sometimes in the midst of my play a tune seems to hover over my playthings.

(ii) I feel that the stillness of my mother’s gaze on my face has spread all over the sky.

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?

Answer the following questions:

1. Why did the villagers pray to God to paralyse the scorpion?

2. Explain why the peasants call the world “unreal”.

3. What does the narrator mean when he says, ‘the peace of understanding on each face’?

4. Explain, ‘I watched the flame feeding on my mother’.

5. What do you understand about the mother from her utterance in the last two lines?

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?

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