Choose any two of the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow:

a) Their dreams that drip with murder; and they’ll be proud

Of glorious war that shatter’d all their pride...

Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;

Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

(i) Name the poem and the poet.

(ii) Whose dreams is the poet referring to?

(iii) How did the war shatter their pride?

(iv) Explain the phrase ‘grim and glad’.

(v) Why are the men referred to as children in the last line?

(b) Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black

Mother. Processional stooping through the turf

Turns work to ritual. Centuries

Of fear and homage to the famine god

Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees,

Make a seasonal altar of the sod.

(i) Who are the people described in these lines?

(ii) What does the ‘Black Mother’ refer to?

(iii) Why does the poet describe the ‘work’ as a ‘ritual’?

(iv) What is their fear?

(v) Why does the poet use religious references in these lines?

(c) Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

(i) What are ‘them’?

(ii) Name the figure of speech used in line 2.

(iii) What are stubble-plains?

(iv) Who are singing in the wailful choir?

(v) What raises and lowers the music of the choir?

(a) (i) Poem- Survivors and Poet-Siegfried Sassoon.

(ii) The Poet is referring the dreams of the shell- shocked soldiers (who have survived in the war) whose dreams are filled with nightmares of the ghosts of friends who died in the battle and scenes of killing in the battlefield.

(iii) The war has shattered their pride in terms of losing the lives of their loved ones. Soldiers are fighting for their country to protect from enemies but in return they have shattered their individual selves about being young and brave by losing their friends in the battlefield.

(iv) Grim means sad and glad means happy, the soldiers were grim because they were determined to fight their enemies knowing that they would be killed in the battlefield and at the same time they were glad that they were going to fight for their country and make it proud and protected.

(v) The men are referred to as children in the last line as they are feeling helpless and their pride has been shattered in the war. Now like children they are having nightmares of ghosts from which they are being scared.

(b)

(i) The potato diggers who are laborers in the potato field are the people described in these lines.

(ii) ‘black mother’ refers to the black earth or the black soil of the potato fields in which these diggers are searching potatoes.

(iii)The poet describes the ‘work’ as a ‘ritual’ because the sight and dedication of the working of the potato diggers give a glimpse of performing any ritual like when they move in groups, bending towards the field at the same time and then standing up and move.

(iv) The fear of the potato diggers is famine i.e. fear of scarcity of food. From centuries this shortage of food has stricken their ancestors and now they are scared for themselves.

(v) The poet uses religious references in these lines he sees that because of the fear of famine the laborers have started worshipping famine as god and begin to please it in the hope that they will never become its victims.

(c)

(i) ”Them” is being referred to spring season here. The poet asks the spring season to show its sights and sounds as he wants to compare them with autumn.

(ii) The figure of speech used in line 2 is Metaphor as the poet describes the sunset as a soft or gentle death of the day.

(iii) “stubble plains” are those fields which have been harvested in the autumn season and are now left as flat or bared.

(iv) The small gnats by the riverside are singing in the wailful choir. They are appearing to wail or mourn as the sun has been going down and the day has come to an end.

(v) The choir sound is the collective buzzing of the tiny little wings of these insects. During the daytime, the small gnats show up by the riverside and appear to be coordinated with the light by raising their movement of wings. Later during sunset, when the light gets dimmer, the gnats also go down by slowing moving their wings and making the lower voice which appears as mourning due to fading of the day.