Page 165 - 8th-language-english-2

2. Why do you think the poet stopped?
3. Which line tells us that the tree is aged?

4. Does the poem mean that cutting a tree is a huge loss for human
beings? Which line supports your answer?
Not to be republished
5. Do you think the poet wrote this poem while the tree was being
cut? Support your answer picking up the relevant line/lines
from the poem.
©KTBS
6. Do you think the poet has made his intention clear to the reader
at the end? Which lines support your answer?

7. What message does the poem give us?
8. What do you learn about the trees from this poem?

9. ‘But I saw death cut down a thousand men.’ Explain. What does
the poet mean by ‘Lovely legacy of wood.’ ?
10. A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines. Usually a sonnet has a
rhyme scheme. Is this poem a sonnet? Check whether this
poem has a rhyme scheme or not.
Note : [Imagine a boy in your classroom, by name Shashi, is unable
to answer even a single question. The teacher gets angry. In his anger,
if the teacher says, ‘Shashi, you’re the Einstein of this class”, does the
teacher really mean what he says? or does he mean the opposite?
Such expressions which say the opposite of what they really mean
are examples of irony.
Read the second stanza carefully.

Do you find any expressions of irony in it?
c4 Death lays his icy hands on kings.

The tree raised his hands to pray.
The above lines are instances of personification where human
qualities are attributed to inanimate objects like ‘death’ and ‘tree’. What
is personified in the last stanza?
additional Reading :

You have read the poem ‘The Axe in the Wood’ You must have felt
concern for the tree that was cut. See what William Wordsworth feels
about our being blind to the treasure and beauty of nature.

153