Walt Whitman All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is “Song of Myself”?
Ans. “Song of Myself”, written by Walt Whitman, is the longest poem in the volume of poems, The Leaves of Grass.
Q.2. What is the theme of “Song of Myself”?
Ans. Idea of self
Notes: Walt Whitman
Q.3. How does the poet realize the immortality of the soul?
Ans. Death is not the end of life but a transformation into an eternal life.
Q.4. What does the spear of grass symbolize?
Ans. Symbolizes the generating power of Nature.
Q.5. What is Walt Whitman’s idea of the immortality of the soul?
Ans. He believes that the souls unite with the Divine Soul after death.
Q.6. What is Whitman’s attitude to sex or procreative ‘urge”?
Ans. As sex is natural, it cannot be evil.
Q.7. In what sense does grass symbolize democracy?
Ans. The grass knows no discrimination by growing at all places, it grows among black and also among white people. Thus it symbolizes democracy.
Q.8. What according to Whitman, is “the handkerchief of the lord”?
Ans. The grass.
Q.9. How does Whitman show the equality of the body and the soul?
Ans. Both are equally important for gaining immortality.
Q.10. How does Whitman become a believer in democracy?
Ans. By realizing that all men are his brothers and all women are either his sisters or his beloveds.
More Brief
Q.1. What does the lonely young woman of twenty-eight watch from her window?
Ans. Watch twenty-eight handsome young men bathing near the seashore.
Q.2. What is the meaning of “unscrew the locks from the doors”?
Ans. The poet does not like those obstacles which come in the way of the union of souls.
Q.3. What is Whitman’s idea of ‘eternity’?
Ans. Eternity is made up of years of processes happening over and over again.
Q.4. Why is the poet not afraid of death?
Ans. Because he has realized the mystic truth that death is not the end of life; rather it is a birth into eternal life.
Q.5. What does the “spotted hawk” symbolize for the poet?
Ans. The “spotted hawk” symbolizes the poet’s soul.
Q.6. What is the basic symbol in the poem ‘Song of Myself?
Ans. “I”
Q.7. Where and when does Whitman behold God?
Ans. Everywhere, twenty-four hours and each moment.
Q.8. What does Whitman mean by the word en masse?
Ans. Democracy.
Q.9, How many sections are there in Song of Myself?
Ans. Fifty-two.
W B Yeats All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the theme of the poem “When You Are Old”?
Ans. unrequited love/ Fleeting nature of love
Q.2. What do you mean by “the pilgrim soul”?
Ans. “The pilgrim soul” refers to a pure soul.
Q.3. What is the theme of the poem “The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland”?
Ans. Deals with an Irishman who is always trying to escape from hard realities into a world of imagination.
Q.4. What is the poem “No Second Troy” about?
Ans. “No Second Troy” is about Maud Gonne.
Q.5. What kind of beauty, according to Yeats, does Maud Gonne possess?
Ans. like a tightened bow.
Q.6. What is the theme of the poem “September 1913”?
Ans. Expression of the poet’s anger and bitterness at the stupidity of the Irish people, and his tribute to the Irish patriot O’Leary.
Q.7. How does the poet see present Ireland?
Ans. Romantic and rebellious Ireland has been replaced by a land of materialism.
Q.8. How does Yeats pay tribute to O’Leary?
Ans. Saying, “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone/ It’s with O’Leary in the grave”.
Q.9: What do you mean by “Kiltarton’s Cross”?
Ans. Refers to a village in West Ireland.
Q.10. What is the name of W.B. Yeats’s daughter?
Ans. Anne Butler Yeats.
Q.11.What kind of husband does Yeats wish for his daughter?
Ans. An aristocratic husband
Q:12. What were Yeats’s views on life-patterns?
Ans. W.B. Yeats was a great upholder of formal courtesy and customary graces of the great aristocratic households.
Q.13.. What is the theme of the poem “The Tower”?
Ans. The poet’s raging against old age.
Q.14. What is the theme of the poem “Leda and the Swan”?
Ans. The birth of Homeric Greece.
Q.15. What is the meaning of the phrase “Honey of generation”?
Ans. The happy incident of birth.
More Brief
Q.1. What is Byzantium?
Ans. Byzantium was the old name of Constantinople or Istanbul, the capital of the Roman Empire. It was an ideal place of art, culture and wisdom.
Q.2. What is the theme of the poem “The Gyres”?
Ans. The cyclical order of history or the rise and fall of civilization.
Q.3. What is the poet’s opinion about fine arts?
Ans. The study of fine arts is not useless even in a time of crisis. Their study enables us to face the tragic realities of life courageously.
Q.4. Why, according to Yeats, is art useful?
Ans. Because Art generates the quality of self control.
Q.5. What is the poet’s view on the rise and fall of civilization?
Ans. The eternal laws of nature.
Q.6. What is “The Countess Cathleen”?
Ans. “The Countess Cathleen” is a play written by Yeats for Maud Gonne.
Q.7. What does Yeats mean by “masterful images”?
Ans. The foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart formed through imagination, grows completely in a pure mind, and thus becomes “masterful images’ ‘.
Q.8. Who does W.B. Yeats address in “When You are Old”?
Ans. Maud Gonne
Q.9. What is “Spiritus Mundi”?
Ans. Yeats defines Spiritus Mundi as “a universal memory and a muse of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or writer.”
Q.10. Whom does the poet address as he lands on the shore of Byzantium?
Ans. The golden smithies of the Emperor.
Q.11. What does falcon symbolize in the poem The Second Coming?
Ans. Intellect.
Q:12. What does the ‘golden bird’ symbolize to Yeats?
Ans. The liberated soul.
Q.13. What is “intellectual hatred”?
Ans. Hatred of an educated and conscious person.
Robert Frost All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. Why does the wife hate her husband in ‘Home Burial’?
Ans. Because he had been unfeeling enough to dig his own baby’s grave.
Q.2. What does the poet assert in the poem ‘Fire and Ice’?
Ans. Fire, symbolizing the intensity of passion or desire, is as destructive as ice, symbolizing the cold of hatred.
Q.3. What is the moral of the poem ‘Mowing”?
Ans. The value of hard work.
Q.4. What is the meaning of the line, “The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows”?
Ans. A labourer does not try to escape into a world of dream or fancy from hard reality. He finds the greatest pleasure in his work, honestly and sincerely.
Q.5. What kind of poem is “Mending Wall”?
Ans. “Mending Wall” is a dramatic monologue.
Q6. Who is the speaker of “Mending Wall”?
Ans. A young man, probably the poet himself.
Q.7. What is the issue of quarrel between the two neighbours in “Mending Wall”?
Ans. To repair a stone wall that separates their properties.
Q.8. What kind of poem is “The Death of the Hired Man”?
Ans. Dramatic lyric.
Q.9. Where is the dramatic action in “The Death of The Hired Man”?
Ans. The change of attitude of the husband towards the hired man.
Q.10. What is the central theme of the poem “The Death Of The Hired Man”?
Ans. The transformation of the stubborn husband.
Q.11. How does Mary define a home?
Ans. According to Mary, home is a place where one does not have to justify oneself as in the outside world, but where one is accepted lovingly for what one is.
Q.12. What kind of poem is “Home Burial”?
Ans. Dramatic dialogue of blank verse.
Q.13. What is the difference between husband and wife in “Home Burial” in the face of their griefs?
Ans. Amy, the wife, lets grief become her whole world, while her husband has strongly suppressed grief and immersed himself in the world.
Q.14. What philosophy of life does Frost give through his poem “After Apple-picking”?
Ans. Like Adam and Eve, the man must continue to work in his life.
Q.15: What is the theme of the poem “The Road Not Taken”?
Ans. The problem of making a choice in life.
More Brief
Q:1. What is the message of the poet in “The Oven Bird”?
Ans. Oven Bird sings of a diminished life, followed by death. Represents the passage of time and the change it brings about.
Q.2. What is the theme of the poem “Birches”?
Ans. The relationship between the real and the ideal worlds, between fact and fancy.
Q.3. To which is life compared in “Birches”?
Ans. Pathless wood.
Q.4. What causes the fatal accident of the boy at the “buzz-saw”?
Ans. When the boy’s sister calls him for supper, his attention is diverted from his work for a second and in that fatal moment his hand was caught by the machine and chopped off by the saw.
Q.5. What is the theme of the poem “Fire and Ice” and how is it presented?
Ans. The destructive force of human passions, love and hatred.
Q.6. What kind of poem is “Come In”?
Ans. Personal lyric.
Q.7. How did the poem “The Gift Outright” gain popularity?
Ans. Since its recitation by the poet at the opening ceremony of the late President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Q.8. What do the Americans feel now about their duties to the motherland?
Ans. With courage and determination they could wage the war of independence, and fight for their motherland.
Q.9. What is the name of the wife in the poem ‘Home Burial”?
Ans. Amy.
Q.10. What is the central theme of the poem “Mowing”?
Ans. The vision of New England.
Q.11. What does the wall stand for in “Mending Wall”?
Ans. The wall stands for barriers.
Q.12. How does Warren define a home?
Ans. Home is a place where one is forced to meet responsibilities, no matter how unwillingly. It is not a place where one has a sense of love and companionship.
W H Auden All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the theme of the poem “Lullaby”?
Ans. The need of love between lovers.
Q.2. Who is Venus?
Ans. Venus in Roman mythology is the goddess of love and beauty (Greek Aphrodite).
Q.3. How does Auden show the permanence of art?
Ans. Auden says that W. B. Yeats died. But his poems, his art will live on because art is not affected by his death.
Q.4. How does Auden estimate Ireland?
Ans. Auden opines that the political conditions of Ireland, the movements of her people and the climatic condition are still the same as before because of the poetry of W. B. Yeats.
Q.5. What is intellectual disgrace?
Ans. ‘Intellectual disgrace’ refers to people’s hatred of one another because of the hostile feelings.
Q.6. What is the underlying meaning of “a voice without a face”?
Ans. It refers to the military commanders who speak to the people over radio. Only their voice is heard but their face is not seen.
Q.7. What is the theme of the poem, “Petition?”
Ans. A diagnosis of modern ills, an analysis of their symptoms and a prayer to God to cure them.
Q.8. What are the modern diseases for the cure of which Auden seeks ‘sovereign touch’?
Ans. Psychological diseases like Neurosis, nervous break-down, sore throat, and maladjustment caused by emotion or desire for love and sex. Auden seeks sovereign touch to cure these diseases.
Q.9. How, according to Auden, is a change of society possible?
Ans. Under God’s guidance only through “a change of heart”.
Q.10. What is “Brueghel’s Icarus”?
Ans. “Brueghel’s Icarus” refers to a painting by Pieter Brueghel. Icarus, a boy falling into the sea.
Q.11. What is the theme of the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”?
Ans. The human position of suffering in this world.
Q.12. Why are the limestone men “unable to conceive a god”?
Ans. Lack the faculty to imagine God.
Q.13. Who are the best’ and ‘the worst”?
Ans. According to Auden, the best and the worst are the saints (good people) and the Caesars (the bad and ambitious people).
Q.14. What do the “granite wastes” symbolize?
Ans. Symbolizes Saints-to-be.
Q.15. What is “anti-mythological myth”?
Ans. The myth out of the realities of life, and not out of the imaginary doings of gods and goddesses:
More Brief
Q.1. What lesson does Auden provide in his poem “In Praise of Limestone”?
Ans. One should accept the reality of life and face it boldly.
Q.2. What does the title “Lullaby” signify?
Ans. Title indicates the song of the poet to send his beloved to sleep with her head on his arm.
Q.3. Whom does Achilles refer to?
Ans. Achilles refers to the modern man who is unable to exist in a world of cruelty, violence and cowardice.
Q.4. What is Auden’s message in “Lullaby”?
Ans. Eros (Physical love) should be transformed into Agape (universal love and charity).
Q.5. Who ‘according to Auden’ dies morally?
Ans. People who fail to oppose the cruelty of the despotic rulers, die morally because of their cowardice.
Q.6. What is Auden’s message in Lullaby?
Ans. Eros (Physical love) should be transformed into Agape (universal love and charity) .
Q.7.Who is the mother of Achilles?
Ans. Thetis, a sea-nymph, according to Greek mythology.
Q.8. What is the source of the title of the poem ‘Out, Out’?
Ans. The title “Out, Out-” has been taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Q.9. Why does Auden call the lover faithless?
Ans. Because he is a human being with necessary human imperfections and as such he is bound to be inconstant in his love.
Q.10. What does the title “The Shield of Achilles” signify?
Ans. It symbolizes art or image of the human condition in the contemporary world.
Dylan Thomas All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the source of the poem “The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flowers”?
Ans. The first two Swansea Notebooks which Dylan had begun at the age of 15.
Q.2. What is “crooked rose”?
Ans. “Crooked rose” refers to Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose” in which the rose is diseased because it is eaten away by canker.
Notes: Dylan Thomas
Q.3. What does the ‘fountain-head’ symbolize?
Ans. It symbolizes the womb, the fountain-head of life, from which Time sucks (dries up) the newly born.
Q.4. What do you mean by “spittled eyes”?
Ans. The pretentious mourners were rubbing their eyes with spit to make them look as though they had been crying.
Q.5. How is the boy Dylan shaken with grief at the death of his aunt?
Ans. He feels as if he should cut his throat and kill himself.
Q.6. How does Thomas estimate his aunt?
Ans. Ann Jones, Thomas’ aunt, was an epitome of love and generosity which flowed out like the spring of water gushing out of a fountain.
Q.7.What made Dylan Thomas a poet?
Ans. His love for his aunt, her death, and writing an elegy in memory of her, have made him a poet in the real sense.
Q.8. What is ‘Zion”?
Ans. ‘Zion’ means Jewish. It is also the name of a small hill in Jerusalem.
Q.9. What is the poet’s idea of death in the poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Death By Fire of a Child in London”?
Ans. Death is not the end of life but a beginning.
Q.10. What is the theme of the poem, “In My Craft or Sullen Art”?
Ans. Thomas says about his poetic manifesto, giving an exposition of his artistic process.
More Brief
Q.1. When does Thomas exercise his poetic art?
Ans. In the calm and quiet night.
Q.2. In what sense the poet’s art is unrewarding or sullen?
Ans. Because of no reward or praise even from those for whom he writes.
Q.3. What is the meaning of green age?
Ans. Boyhood or the youthful period of life.
Q.4: What does “The Force’ signify?
Ans. “The Force” refers to some powerful energy. It may be the “Life-Force” of Bernard Shaw or sexual urge or simply the process of Time.
Q.5. What does the poet mean by ‘Wintry fever”?
Ans. Refers to sickness of old age.
Q.6.What does Thomas mean by “Spindrift pages”?
Ans. The short-lived nature of his poems.
Q.7. What does Dylan Thomas mean by Green fuse?
Ans. ‘Fuse’ suggests explosive force or energy or power. It is called ‘green’ because it is at work in Nature which is green.
Q.8. What kind of poem is After the Funeral?
Ans. “After the Funeral” is an elegy written in memory of Ann Jones, the poet’s maternal aunt.
Q.9.What are “mule praises”?
Ans. The hypocritical mourners grief for the death of the poets aunt are not only conventional but also stupid. So he calls their mourning ‘mule praises”.
Q.10. What are “stuffed foxes and stale fern”
Ans. The stuffed fox and stale fern” refer to various articles of decoration in Aunt Jones’ room.
Seamus Heaney All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the theme of the poem “Death of a Naturalist”?
Ans. The loss of childhood innocence and the initiation into adulthood.
Q.2. Who was Miss Walls?
Ans. Miss Walls was the school teacher teaching the children about the frog’s reproductive system.
Notes: Seamus Heaney
Q.3. What is the theme of the poem “Follower”?
Ans. The parent-child relationship.
Q.4. What was the ambition of the poet in his boyhood?
Ans. To be as fine a ploughman as his father.
Q.5. What is the theme of the poem “Requiem For the Croppies”?
Ans. Tribute to the patriotic Irish rebels..
Q.6. Who is the speaker of the poem “Requiem for the Croppies”?
Ans. The narrator who is one of the rebels.
Q.7. What does “Croppies” refer to?
Ans. “Croppies” refers to the ‘croppy boys’.
Q.8. Who is the Tollund Man?
Ans. He was sacrificed to the goddess of fertility in the early Iron Age.
Q.9. What does Seamus Heaney’s own Catholic ritual and the sacrifice of the victims’ fate of the Tollund Man represent?
Ans. Represents the pagan sacrifice, by the modern men of violence on the altar of nationalism.
Q.10. What is the theme of the poem “Punishment”?
Ans. The troubles of the present Ireland.
Q.11. Who is the girl referred to in the poem “Punishment”?
Ans. In 1950 some Danish farmers discovered some bodies of women few thousand years old, preserved perfectly in the peat. The girl in the poem “Punishment” is one of them. She was brutally killed (punished) for adultery,
Q.12. What truth does the poet realize in “Punishment”?
Ans. He would have remained quiet when the little girl was punished in the long past, because he stands “dumb” now when the girls of his neighborhood are tortured for their friendship with British soldiers.
More Brief
Q.1. What kind of man was the fisherman in the poem “Casualty”?
Ans. The fisherman spoke little and cared little for the rules of society.
Q.2. How does the poet criticize the role of his society in “Casualty”?
Ans. People obeyed the unofficial dictate from the IRA that they stay in doors.
Q.3. What is the message of the poem “Casualty”?
Ans. The dead fisherman knew the solution to the problems of Ireland.
Q.4.. What is the theme of the poem “Funeral Rites”?
Ans. A satisfactory burial for those who have been killed in the violence of Northern Ireland.
Q.5. What is the message of the poet in “Funeral Rites”?
Ans. The poet in his poem “Funeral Rites” calls upon his countrymen (Irish people) to stop the feuds between Catholics and Protestants.
Q.6. What is surrealism?
Ans. Surrealism is a style in art and literature in which ideas, images, and objects are combined in a strange way, like in a dream.
Q.7. What is the theme of the poem ‘Digging”?
Ans. The poet’s choice of a career to dig up the perfect words with his pen.
Q.8. What does the girl in the poem ‘Punishment’ symbolize?
Ans. The girl in the poem, “Punishment” symbolizes Ireland as she, like Ireland, was murdered at the hand of a group of oppressors.
Q.9. How was young Heaney alienated from his father?
Ans. Because of his ineptitude and because he interfered with his serious work on the land.
Q.10. What kind of farm life does Heaney portray in the poem Digging?
Ans. Heaney portrays the hard life of the farmers who have to work in an unfavourable situation.
Must Watch and justify yourself-12 Brief
a) Where does Whitman behold God?
Ans. He feels the presence of God everywhere each hour of the twenty four and each moment.
b) How many sections are there in the poem, “Song of Myself?
Ans.52 sections.
c)What kind of husband does Yeats wish for his daughter?
Ans. He prays that his daughter be married to a good husband who takes her to a home with aristocratic values and traditions.
d)Whom do ‘Leada’ and ‘the swan’ represent?
Ans.Leada represents a Greeck woman and the swan represents the Zeus (or Jupiter)
e) Who is the speaker in the poem, “Mending Wall”?
Ans. The speaker says it all of his point of view in a first person narrative.
f) What is ‘Horn of Plenty’?
Ans.Coruncupia comes from Latin cornu copiae, which translates literally as ‘horn of Plenty’.
g)What does inner weather symbolize?
Ans. The spiritual anguish,doubts and conflicts by which the poet is torn and tossed.
h)Who was Achilles?
Ans.Achilies refers to the modern man who is unable to think in a world of cruelty, violence and cowardice.
i)Who is Harlod Wilson?
Ans. A young school boy.
j)To which life is compared in ‘Briches’?
Ans.Life is compared to a pathless wood.
k)What is the meaning of green age?
Ans. Boyhood or the youthful period of life.
I)Who is a Miss Wall?
Ans. Miss Wall is a school teacher.
