Directions: Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow…
2019
Directions: Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate options :
Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
With the wonderful water around you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast
World, you are beautifully drest.
The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree,
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.
You friendly Earth, how far do you go,
With the wheat – fields that nod and the rivers that flow
With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles ?
Ah ! You are so great and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, world, at all;
And yet when I said my prayers today,
A whisper inside me seemed to say,
'You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot,
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot !'
The beautiful dress worn by the Earth is made of :
- A.
mills and the hills.
- B.
gardens and wheat-fields.
- C.
water and grass.
- D.
mountains and forests.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept:
When a poem personifies an object - here, calling the Earth's covering a "dress" - the images that make up that dress are the ones the poet names in the lines immediately leading into the personifying statement. To answer a "what is X made of" question on a poem, locate the exact line that states the metaphor and read the concrete images stated right before it, not images used elsewhere in the poem for a different purpose.
Application:
The opening stanza reads: "With the wonderful water around you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully drest." The clause "you are beautifully drest" is completed grammatically by the two images stated just before it - water curled around the Earth and grass upon its breast. So the poem states the Earth's dress is made of water and grass.
Cross-check:
mills and the hills: these appear in the second stanza, describing what the wind does ("it walks on the water, and whirls the mills, and talks to itself on the tops of the hills") - part of the wind's action, not the Earth's dress.
gardens and wheat-fields: these appear in the third stanza, listing what the Earth's surface holds as it stretches out ("with the wheat-fields that nod ... with cities and gardens") - this answers how far the Earth goes, not what its dress is made of.
mountains and forests: neither word is used anywhere in the extract; nothing in the poem links the Earth's dress, or any other image, to mountains or forests.
So the dress metaphor is completed only by the two images stated directly before it in the first stanza - water and grass.