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प्रश्न
Read the song once again.
I am dotted silver threads dropped from heaven
By the gods. Nature then takes me, to adorn
Her fields and valleys.
I am beautiful pearls, plucked from the
Crown of Ishtar by the daughter of Dawn
To embellish the gardens.
When I cry the hills laugh;
When I humble myself the flowers rejoice;
When I bow, all things are elated.
The field and the cloud are lovers
And between them I am a messenger of mercy.
I quench the thirst of the one;
I cure the ailment of the other.
The voice of thunder declares my arrival;
The rainbow announces my departure.
I am like earthly life which begins at
The feet of the mad elements and ends
Under the upraised wings of death.
I emerge from the heart of the sea and
Soar with the breeze. When I see a field in
Need, I descend and embrace the flowers and
The trees in a million little ways.
I touch gently at the windows with my
Soft fingers, and my announcement is a
Welcome song. All can hear, but only
The sensitive can understand.
I am the sigh of the sea;
The laughter of the field;
The tears of heaven.
So with love -
Sighs from the deep sea of affection; Laughter from the colourful
field of the spirit; Tears from the endless heaven of memories.
About the Poet
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) was a Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer. His
poetry is notable for its use of formal language as well as insights on topics of life using
spiritual terms. One of his most notable lines of poetry in the English-speaking world is
from Sand and Foam (1926) which reads 'Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say
it so that the other half may reach you.'
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उत्तर
Do it yourself
APPEARS IN
संबंधित प्रश्न
Study the words in italics in the sentences below. They are formed by prefixing un – or in – to their antonyms (words opposite in meaning).
• I was a short boy with rather undistinguished looks. (un + distinguished)
• My austere father used to avoid all inessential comforts.(in + essential)
• The area was completely unaffected by the war.(un + affected)
• He should not spread the poison of social inequality and communal intolerance. (in + equality, in+ tolerance)
Now form the opposites of the words below by prefixing un- or in-. The prefix in- can also have the forms il-, ir-, or im- (for example: illiterate –il + literate, impractical –im + practical, irrational – ir+ rational). You may consult a dictionary if you wish.
| _____adequate | _____acceptable | _____regular | _____tolerant |
| ____demanding | ____active | _____true | _____permanent |
| ____patriotic | ____disputed | ____accessible | _____coherent |
| _____logical | _____legal | _____responsible | _____possible |
Look at these words:
...peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings
What do these words mean to you? What do you think “comes dropping slow...from the veils of the morning”? What does “to where the cricket sings” mean?
Why does the author say that Iswaran seemed to more than make up for the absence of a TV in Mahendra’s living quarters?
Parents alone are responsible for inculcating a good sense of dental hygiene
amongst children. Do you agree/disagree? Discuss with your partner
Here's a glimpse of a naughty child whose life is full of fun and frolic .
One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from ita secret troubles was that it bad found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom bad struggled with his pride a few days and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's house all night and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should die! There was distraction in the thought. Tom Sawyer no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manners of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are Infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When something fresh in this line came out, she was in a fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy.
2. She tried every remedy she could. Yet, not with standing all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the boy with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plaster&. She calculated his capacity as she would judge and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.
3. Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith on Pain-killer. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the 'indifference' was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
4. Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance and his aunt ended up by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
5. One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously and begging for a taste. Tom said: "Peter, now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self."
6. Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersaults, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor hysterical with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
7. The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized by anxiety. Too late he divined her 'drift'. The handle of the telltale teaspoon was visible under the sofa. Aunt Polly took it, held it up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle - his ear - and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him - because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt! -you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one, she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!"
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It done him good, too. I never see him get around so-"
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs;
The first man held his back.
For on the faces around the fire,
He noticed one was black.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow:
Explain with reference to context
An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What does the term “pontoon bridge” mean?
“So that is what you are doing out here? A marshal!” “My dear Miss Fairchild,” said ’ Easton, calmly, “I had to do something. Money has & way of taking wings unto itself, and
you know it takes money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in the West, and—well, a marshalship isn’t quite as high a position as that of ambassador, but—” “The ambassador,” said the girl, warmly, “doesn’t call any more. He needn’t ever have done so. You ought to know that. And so now you are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go into all kinds of dangers. That’s different from the Washington life. You have been missed from the old crowd.” The girl’s eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon the glittering handcuffs. “Don’t you worry about them, miss,” said the other man. “All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting away. Mr. Easton knows his business.” “Will we see you again soon in Washington?” asked the girl. “Not soon, I think,” said Easton. “My butterfly days are over, I fear.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why do marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners?
The boy looked up. He took his hands from his face and looked up at his teacher. The light from Mr. Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face, if you could call it a face. He had no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. It was just a round smooth head with a school cap on top of it.
And that’s where the story should end, as indeed it has for several people who have had similar experiences and dropped dead of inexplicable heart attacks. But for Mr. Oliver, it did not end there. The torch fell from his trembling hand. He turned and scrambled down the path, running blindly through the trees and calling for help. He was still running towards the school buildings when he saw a lantern swinging in the middle of the path. Mr. Oliver had never before been so pleased to see the night watchman. He stumbled up to the watchman, gasping for breath and speaking incoherently.
What is it, Sahib? Asked the watchman, has there been an accident? Why are you running?
I saw something, something horrible, a boy weeping in the forest and he had no face.
No face, Sahib?
No eyes, no nose, mouth, nothing.
Do you mean it was like this, Sahib? asked the watchman, and raised the lamp to his own face. The watchman had no eyes, no ears, no features at all, not even an eyebrow. The wind blew the lamp out and Mr. Oliver had his heart attack.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What was Mr Oliver’s reaction when he saw the faceless boy? Whom did he stumble into?
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening— the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing. She crept along trembling with cold and hunger—a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Which day of the year was it in the story?
I could hear the squeaking that heralded the evening arrival of the bats. I listened to the noises of the approaching night. Every day my hearing grew sharper. I was learning to filter out whatever I did not need to listen to, and giving no sign that I could hear everything that went on in the house.
I could not sleep. The air was heavy and still, the moon hidden behind thick banks of cloud. Lord Otori was sound asleep. I did not want to leave the house I'd come to love so much, but I seemed to be bringing nothing but trouble to it. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if I just vanished in the night. [5]
Now I heard the hiss of hot water as the bath was prepared, the clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the sliding sigh of the cook's knife, a dog barking two streets away, and the sounds of feet on the wooden bridges on the canals. I knew the sounds of the house, day and night, in the sunshine and under the rain. This evening I realized I was always listening for something more. I was waiting too. For what? [10]
I began to wonder if I could get out of the house without setting the dogs barking and arousing the guards. I started consciously listening to the dogs. Usually, I heard them bark on and off throughout the night, but I'd learned to distinguish their barks and to ignore them. I set my ears for them but heard nothing. Then I started listening for the guards: the sound of a foot on stone or a whispered conversation. Nothing. Sounds that should have been there been missing from the night's familiar web. [20]
Now I was wide-awake, straining my ears to hear. There came the slightest of sounds, hardly more than a tremor, between the window and the ground.
For a moment I thought it was the earth-shaking, as it so often did. Another tiny tremble followed, then another. Someone was climbing up the side of the house [25]
My first instinct was to yell out, but cunning took over. I rose from the mattress and crept silently to Lord Otori's side. I knelt beside him and whispered in his ear, "Lord Otori, someone is, outside." [30]
He woke instantly and then reached for the sword and knife that lay beside him. I gestured to the window. The faint tremor came again.
Lord Otori passed the knife to me and stepped to the wall. I moved to the other side of the window. We waited for the assassin to climb in.
Step by step he came up the wall, stealthy and unhurried as if he had all the time in the world. We waited for him with the same patience. [35]
He paused on the sill to take out the knife he planned to use on us and then stepped inside. Lord Otori took him in a stranglehold. The intruder wriggled backwards. I leaped at him, and the three of us fell into the garden like a flurry of fighting cats. [40]
The man fell first, across the stream, striking his head on a boulder. Lord Otori landed on his feet. My fall was broken by one of the shrubs. The intruder groaned, tried to rise, but slipped back into the water.
"Get a light," Lord Otori said.
I ran to the house, took a light that still burned in one of the candle stands and carried it back to the garden. [45]
The assassin had died without regaining consciousness. It turned out he had a poison pellet in his mouth and had crushed it as he tell. He was dressed in black, with no marking on his clothes. I held the light over him. There was nothing to tell us who he was. [50]
(i) Given below are four words and phrases. Find the words which have a similar meaning in the passage:
(1) Coming near
( 2 ) Disappeared suddenly
(3) Awakening from sleep
(4) Moved slowly and gradually
(ii) For each of the words given below, write a sentence of at least ten words using the same word unchanged in form, but with a different meaning from that which it carries in the passage:
(1) Bats ( line 1 )
( 2 ) Sign ( line 4 )
( 3 ) Banks ( line 6 )
( 4 ) Back ( line 43 )
Complete the following poem with words from the box below. Then recite the poem.
Soldiers live in barracks
And birds in ———————,
Much like a snake that rests
In a ———————. No horse is able
To sleep except in a ———————.
And a dog lives well,
Mind you, only in a ———————.
To say ‘hi’ to an ant, if you will,
You may have to climb an ———————.
| hole | kennel | nests | anthill | atable |
Answer the following question
Did Kari enjoy his morning bath in the river? Give a reason for your answer.
From the third paragraph pick out
(i) words associated with cries of birds,
(ii) words associated with noise,
(iii) words suggestive of confusion and fear.
“...Mr. Purcell heard it no more than he would have heard the monotonous ticking of a familiar clock.” (Read para beginning with “It was a rough day...”)
(i)What does ‘it’ refer to?
(ii) Why does Mr. Purcell not hear ‘it’ clearly?
What does the poet call ‘buttercup’ as? Why?
Answer the following question. (Refer to that part of the text whose number is given against the question. This applies to the comprehension questions throughout the book.)
In what subjects did the little man need help to do Patrick’s homework? (5, 6)
Now complete these sentences about your house and home.
(i) My house is ____________.
(ii) The best thing about my home is ____________.
When does the kite seem to take rest?
Gratiano explains, "We are the Jasons, we have won the fleeee." In this context the word 'fleeee' refers to ______.
