FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH - KSEEB - CLASS 10 - POEM SUMMARY

POEM SUMMARY

TO A PAIR OF SARUS CRANES

A poet tells about the cold nature of a killer. He does not care about the sentiments of cranes. They act heartless towards the pair of cranes. A killer shot dead the male crane when it was least expected. He did not even give the chance to save himself. He killed the crane when was enjoying the colors of his life. He was just about to began his day and go out to fly in a beautiful sky. 

They did not even showed respect when he shot him dead. They carried him by his hand and jaws and threw it in a coarse washing bag. Like he was some dirty filthy thing. The female crane witnessing all this, started acting like some insane to express her grief. They did not care about the female crane and carried away her love of life with them. 

 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S LETTER TO HIS SON'S TEACHER

Abraham Lincoln’s Letter to his son’s headmaster is full of his optimism and values he believed in; this letter reflects his greatness and ideals he always held close to his heart. In this letter he urges his son’s headmaster to instill in him these values to make him a great human being. 

He asks him to teach his son faith in humanity. He should teach him not to be discouraged by scoundrels, selfish politicians, and enemies as there are heroes, dedicated leaders, and friends too. He asks him to teach him the value of labour and hard-work; the necessity of going through failures in order to appreciate success or victory. He asks him to teach him to stay away from envy and to enjoy quiet laughter. He requests him to teach him that bullies accept defeat quickly. He also urges the headmaster to teach his son the wonders of reading books and deep quiet reflection on the beautiful mysteries of nature. 

    He also wants the headmaster to teach him the value of honesty and integrity, his unique individuality, and self-belief and conviction in a trying situation. He appeals to the headmaster to teach his son the art of being gentle and polite with good people; and tough with the tough ones. He also requests the headmaster to teach his son to be strong enough and have the courage to be different, truthful, and always focus on the good.

    He insists on him to teach him the secrets of keeping away sadness with laughter; lightening his heart’s burden with sincere tears; not to mind too much the cynics’ ideas; and beware of people who are excessively sweet. Lincoln also appeals to the headmaster to always endorse and support to the best people in physical strength and intelligence; he must never ever compromise on issues related to heart and spirituality. He wants the headmaster to teach him how to become deaf to the howling of irrational mob and always believe in himself and fight for what he thinks is right. 

    At the end of the letter he advises the headmaster neither to be too gentle with him nor treat him harshly. He requests him to teach him to develop courage to be patient, and have patience to be brave. He winds up the letter by asking him have sublime faith in himself because only then he can have faith in himself.

 

THE TEMPLE AND THE BODY (VACHANA)

The poem 'The Temple And The Body' highlights the difference between the rich and the poor on the basis that the rich can build the temple of Shiva and hence attain the path to heaven. What could the poor do? The poor embodies the temple in his own body wherein his legs are pillars, the body is the shrine and the head is a cupola of gold. It is the head where prayer, communion and true meditation happen.

It further underlines the fact that temples erected by the rich would succumb to the effects of time and fall but the temple of the embodied self moves with the flow of time and will never perish.

 

LOCHINVAR

The poem Lochinvar written by Sir Walter Scott this poem captures the values of the times it was written in, where a physically superior mate (Lochinvar) just swooped in and claimed his prize (Ellen). The narrative style of the poem also points to the reality of the times when women were viewed as chattel with no independent agency. Therefore the only options before Ellen were to belong either to Lochinvar or to the bridegroom; she didn't have the option of rejecting them both. However, if we view the bridegroom's behaviour in a modern context, his passivity reflects his respect for Ellen's wish to be with her true love and it is the ultimate expression of gentlemanly behaviour, which makes the bridegroom the actual hero of the story. The bridegroom's behaviour could only have been interpreted as cowardly if Ellen were truly in love with the bridegroom and Lochinvar kidnapped her. 

 

A POISON TREE

          The speaker recounts being mad at a friend. The speaker told their friend about this anger, which subsequently went away. By contrast, when the speaker was angry with an enemy, the speaker kept quiet. Their anger then increased. 

The speaker cultivated this anger as if it were something planted in a garden, metaphorically nourishing it with fears and tears, both day and night. The speaker's smiles and other gentle deceptions used to hide the anger, in fact only fed the anger further. 

The anger grew constantly until it became a tree, which bore a bright apple. The speaker's enemy saw this apple shining and knew it belonged to the speaker. 

The enemy snuck into the speaker's garden during the dead of night. The next morning, the speaker is happy to see this enemy lying dead beneath the tree.

 

SONNET 73

In this poem, the speaker invokes a series of metaphors to characterize the nature of what he perceives to be his old age. In the first quatrain, he tells the beloved that his age is like a “time of year,” late autumn, when the leaves have almost completely fallen from the trees, and the weather has grown cold, and the birds have left their branches.

In the second quatrain, he then says that his age is like late twilight, “As after sunset fadeth in the west,” and the remaining light is slowly extinguished in the darkness, which the speaker likens to “Death’s second self.”

In the third quatrain, the speaker compares himself to the glowing remnants of a fire, which lies “on the ashes of his youth”—that is, on the ashes of the logs that once enabled it to burn—and which will soon be consumed “by that which it was nourished by”—that is, it will be extinguished as it sinks into the ashes, which its own burning created.

In the couplet, the speaker tells the young man that he must perceive these things, and that his love must be strengthened by the knowledge that he will soon be parted from the speaker when the speaker, like the fire, is extinguished by time.

 

STOLEN BOAT

Since the poem is an excerpt of a long epic, the whole poem forms one whole stanza. The poem begins with the poet confessing an incident form his childhood. 

On a summer evening, the young poet found a little boat tethered to a willow tree in some rocky cave. He ‘stole’ the boat and took it on a joy ride across the lake. He was aware of his act of stealth but his guilt was intermixed with the feeling of pleasure. He says that his ride of the boat was accompanied by the echoes of the mountain. The poet steadily kept moving away from the shore and the reflection of the stars and moon left a trail of light on the surface of the water. As he sailed away from the shore, he kept his eyes on the horizon, which comprised a short crag and the stars above, to keep his path fixed to a straight, unswerving line. The poet praises the light boat he had stolen and calls are ‘an elfin pinnace’. He also praises his own prowess as a rower and compares himself and the boat to a swan that goes heaving through the water gracefully and effortlessly. This merry ride continued in peace until a mighty mountain peak up reared its head between the short crag and the stars.

    As he kept rowing further away from the shore, the mountain grew in sight. The form of the huge shape frightened the poet and stirred his conscience. It seemed to chase after the poet as he kept drawing the boar away from its moor. Scared of this huge, black shape, the poet hurries back towards the cove he had stolen the boat from and returns home with a grave heart and a heavy conscience. The poet reminisces that following that incident, he had spent many days suffering from nightmares of the grim, huge shape. He says that the familiar forms, colours and shapes of nature that he had been accustomed to were replaced by the images of this huge mountain. This mountain, according to Wordsworth, was not a passive structure made of rocks or stone. It was like a living being yet different from living beings. It had taken over his thoughts by days and dreams by night. For many a day, he was tormented by the memory and solitude. Even though he realizes it’s only an optical illusion that the mountain was chasing him, it weighed heavy on his conscience and he realized the presence of beings unknown and unfathomable to him.

MENDING WALL

Mending Wall is a poem in blank verse that remains relevant for these uncertain times. It involves two rural neighbors who one spring day meet to walk along the wall that separates their properties and repair it where needed.

The speaker in the poem is a progressive individual who starts to question the need for such a wall in the first place. The neighbor beyond the hill is a traditionalist and has, it seems, little time for such nonsense. 'Good fences make good neighbors,' is all he will say.

We all have neighbors; we all know that walls eventually need repairing. Walls separate and keep people apart, walls deny right of passage and yet provide security. Despite the need for such a barrier, the opening line - Something there is that doesn't love a wall, - implies that the idea of a wall isn't that straightforward.

Robert Frost, in his own inimitable way, invites the reader into controversy by introducing mischief into the poem. The speaker wants to put a notion into the head of his neighbor, to ask him to explain why it is good walls make good neighbors, but in the end says nothing.

A wall may seem useful in the countryside as it could help keep livestock safe and secure and mark a definite boundary. But a wall that separates village from village, city from city, country from country, people from people, and family from family - that's a completely different scenario.  Robert Frost's poem can help pinpoint such issues and bring them out into the open.

 

BUTTOO

Ekalavya was refused by Dronacharya the famous Guru of archery to teach him as the Guru loved Arjuna and wanted to make him the master of the art. Dejected Ekalavya returned to the forest, made an idol of the Guru and mastered archery perfectly. 

Dronacharya came to know this and found he was better than Arjuna. He asked Gurudakhshina from Ekalavya as his statue was used. He asked the thumb and Ekalavya instantly gave it as the dakhshina. 

C.L.M.

John Masefield writes about his mother whom he has lost at the age of six. He states how he began his journey in his mother’s womb which was dark and how his mother had lost her beauty because of his birth and made him a man. “Her beauty fed my common earth” means that she has lost her beauty because of pregnancy. 

His experience in the womb is explained that he was not able to see, breathe nor stir yet, she gave him life and now she is in the grave where she could not see whether her love has transformed him into good or bad, whether he uses his charm for ill or well.

If she could come down from the grave gates, she would not recognize him because he is a grown-up man now unless he allows his "soul’s face" and his sense to be seen by her and what she had done to her. Here, we can feel the earning of a motherless child. 

He then thinks how is going to repay the debt of being carried in a womb and going through wretched days till the birth of him. He feels that he cannot thank her enough. He then recollects how the world is now. How men’s lust are roving without being untamed and how women’s life is trampled. He ends the poem by asking the gates of the grave to remain closed otherwise; he will be ashamed of the deeds of the men.