Exercises
Question 1. There are two voices in the poem. Who do they belong to? Which lines indicate this?
Answer : There are two voices in the poem. One belongs to the poet and the other one belongs to the rain. The line for the poet is, “And who art thou?” and the line for the rain is, “I am the Poem of Earth”.
Question 2. What does the phrase “strange to tell” mean?
Answer : We all believe that the nature has life, but we can never imagine that it has a voice also. That is the reason the poet was taken aback when the falling shower answered his question “strange to tell”, hence, indicates the poet’ surprise on listening to the voice of the rain.
Question 3. There is a parallel drawn between rain and music. Which words indicate this? Explain the similarity between the two.
Answer : The similarity between rain and music is indicated by the words are ‘soft falling’ and ‘song, issuing from its birth place’. The rain and musical notes fall softly on the Earth and ears respectively. The rain emerges from Earth and the song from its notes.
Question 4. How is the cyclic movement of rain brought out in the poem? Compare it with what you have learnt in Science.
Answer : The cyclic movement of the rain is beautifully depicted by the poet. It rises out of the land and the sea in the form of the vapours. The atmosphere upwards cools it down and it falls in the form of rain on Earth. This is similar to what we have learnt about the water cycle in Science.
Question 5. Why are the last two lines put in the brackets?
Answer : The last two lines are put in the brackets to give a more poignant and significant meaning to poem. The rain, like a song, after completing its course, comes back to its origin. It does not matter whether someone recognises its worth or not.
Question 6. List the pairs of opposites found in the poem.
Answer :
- Land and the bottomless sea
- Day and night
- Reck’d and unreck’d