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Question
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
There’s nobody on the house-tops now …..
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles’ Gate …… or, better yet,
By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
– The Patriot, Robert Browning
(i) Who is the speaker? Where is he being taken? Why?
(ii) Describe the scene when he had walked down the same street a year ago.
(iii) Where does the speaker think all the people had gathered that day? Why does he think so?
(iv) Describe the speaker's physical condition.
(v) What is the central message of the poem? Does the poem and on a note of hope or despair? Give one reason for your answer.
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Solution
(i) The speaker here is the patriot. He is being taken to the scaffold to be hanged for his misdeeds. He is passing through some street in a town.
(ii) A year ago, the patriot was worshipped like a hero. He was accorded a warm welcome on his return after a glorious victory. His path was strewn with flowers. The church towers were decorated with victory-flags. Huge crowds were there to welcome him.
(iii) The speaker thinks that all the people have left the town and gone to the Shambles’ Gate or quite near the scaffold in order to have a better view of the patriot’s (his) execution. Only a few paralysed persons are sitting at the windows.
(iv) The speaker’s physical condition is pathetic. He is being led to the gallows. A long rope has been used to tie his hands on the back. The rope is so tight that it cuts both his hands. His forehead is bleeding. It is due to the stones hurled at him by some callous and cruel fellows. All this shows that he is being treated very harshly.
(v) The central message of the poem is the fickle mindedness of the ordinary people who go enthusiastic at welcoming a hero but soon get disappointed with him and begin to hurl abuses and stones on him.
The poem ends on a note of hope. Though the hero in this poem feels betrayed and abandoned, he achieves a moral victory. He feels that he has not been rewarded for his services on the earth, he hopes he would be rewarded by God in heaven. So he feels safe in the bosom of God. His faith in God being a true judge marks his unbounded sense of optimism.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Find the words in the text which show Ustad Bismillah Khan’s feelings about the items listed below. Then mark a tick (✓ ) in the correct column. Discuss your answers in class.
| Bismillah Khan’s Feelings about | Positive | Negative | Neutral |
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1. teaching children music |
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| 2. the film world | |||
| 3. migrating to the U.S.A | |||
| 4. playing at temples | |||
| 5. getting the Bharat Ratna | |||
| 6. the banks of the Ganga | |||
| 7. leaving Benaras and Dumraon |
“I love the West,” said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were shining softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to speak truly and simply without the gloss of style and manner: “Mamma and I spent the summer in Deliver. She went home a week ago
because father was slightly ill. I could live and be happy in the West. I think the air here agrees with me. Money isn’t everything. But people always misunderstand things and remain stupid—” “Say, Mr. Marshal,” growled the glum-faced man. “This isn’t quite fair. I’m needing a drink, and haven’t had a smoke all day. Haven’t you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won’t you? I’m half dead for a pipe.”
The bound travellers rose to their feet, Easton with the Same slow smile on his face. “I can’t deny a petition for tobacco,” he said, lightly. “It’s the one friend of the unfortunate. Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. Duty calls, you know.” He held out his hand for a farewell. “It’s too bad you are not going East,” she said, reclothing herself with manner and style. “But you must go on to Leavenworth, I suppose?” “Yes,” said Easton, “I must go on to Leavenworth.”
The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker. The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the conversation. Said one of them: “That marshal’s a good sort of chap. Some of these Western fellows are all right.” “Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn’t he?” asked the other. “Young!” exclaimed the first speaker, “why—Oh! didn’t you catch on? Say—did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his right hand?”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why is Fairchild heading east?
Mr. Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night on the outskirts of the hill station of Shimla. The school was conducted on English public school lines and the boys – most of them from well-to-do Indian families – wore blazers, caps and ties. “Life” magazine, in a feature on India, had once called this school the Eton of the East.
Mr. Oliver had been teaching in this school for several years. He’s no longer there. The Shimla Bazaar, with its cinemas and restaurants, was about two miles from the school; and Mr. Oliver, a bachelor, usually strolled into the town in the evening returning after dark, when he would take short cut through a pine forest.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Which route did Mr Oliver take on his way back?
She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas-tree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchant’s. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show- windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.
The Christmas lights rose higher and higher, till they looked to her like the stars in the sky. Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Someone is dying,” thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why did the girl think that “Someone is dying” ?
Match the following.
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1. |
unprecedented space tragedy |
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2. |
certified flight instructor |
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3. |
space mission |
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4. |
super specialisation |
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5. |
encyclopaedic knowledge |
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6. |
awe-inspiring |
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7. |
in this age |
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