CLASS 11

ASSIGNMENT- English

Laburnum Top-

1. Read the extract carefully, and answer the following-

She stokes it fully, then flirts out to a branch-end

Showing her barred face identity mask
Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings
She launches away, towards the infinite
And the laburnum subsides to empty.
(i) Who does ‘she’ refer to? What does she stoke?
(ii) What is the identification mask of the bird?
(iii) What do you notice about the beginning and the ending of the poem?
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.
(i) To what is the goldfinch’s movement compared?
(ii) Why does the poet use the word ‘engine’? Do you think it is hyperbole or exaggeration?
(iii) Which two sounds dominate in this extract?
2. Answer the following- (30-40 words)
1. What gives a unique character to that particular laburnum tree?
2. How does the poet describe the laburnum tree?
3. How does the poet describe the goldfinch bird?
4. ‘Then sleek as a lizard and alert and abrupt, she enters the thickness’. Explain the given lines.

The Voice of the Rain

1. Read the extract carefully, and answer the following-

(a) 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,
i) Name the poem and the poet.
(ii) What does the phrase strange to tell mean?
(iii) Why does the rain call herself the ‘Poem of the Earth’?

(b) Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely formed, altogether changed, and yet the same,
I descend to lave the droughts, atomics, dust-layers of the globe.
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;

(i) There are two voices in the poem. Who do they belong to?
(ii) How does the rain narrate the story of her birth and functions?
(iii) What impression do you form about the speaker?

(iii) 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)

1) How is the cyclic movement of rain brought out in the poem?

2) What is the significance of the world ‘song’ here?

3) How does the rain benefit the earth?

2. Answer the following- (30-40 words)

1. What is the central idea of Walt Whitman’s poem?
2. What question does the poet ask for the rain? What reply does he get?
3. What is the life-cycle of clouds?
4. Rain does its duty unmindful of any recognition. A great lesson is hidden here. What is that?