Read the poem given below and answer the questions that follow: Great, wide,…
2024
Read the poem given below and answer the questions that follow:
Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
With the wonderful water round 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!'
In this poem, the poet describes the :
- A.
the Earth, its present and past
- B.
the plants that grow on the Earth
- C.
beauty and vastness of Earth
- D.
life in the cities
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
The theme of a poem is the single idea that every stanza points back to - an image, quality, or feeling that keeps recurring - not one fact mentioned only once. To find it, scan every stanza for the description that is repeated and built upon throughout, and reject any option that accounts for only one isolated detail.
This poem addresses the Earth as a 'great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world' in its very first line, and every stanza afterwards adds another feature to that same picture: water curled around it, grass on its breast, the air and wind moving over it, wheat-fields, rivers, cities, gardens, cliffs and isles, and 'people upon you for thousands of miles.' The poet's questions - 'How far do you go?' and 'Ah, you are so great' - both underline scale, while the repeated word 'wonderful' and the phrase 'beautifully drest' underline how attractive the Earth appears. Read together, every stanza contributes to one composite impression: the Earth's enormous size and its beauty.
Checking this against the other options confirms it:
'the Earth, its present and past' - nothing in the poem refers to an earlier time or history; every image describes the Earth exactly as it is now.
'the plants that grow on the Earth' - grass is named only once, alongside water, air, wind, rivers, cities and more, so a single plant reference cannot carry the whole poem.
'life in the cities' - cities appear in a single line together with gardens, cliffs and isles, one detail among many, not the poem's overall subject.
The option built from every recurring image together - the Earth's size and its appearance - is the one that matches the whole poem.