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 !'
Mood of the speaker in all of these lines is :
- A.
serious
- B.
joyous
- C.
sad
- D.
introspective
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
The mood or tone of a poem is the speaker's overall emotional attitude, built up from the cumulative effect of word choice, imagery, and the emotional movement across the WHOLE passage — not from any single line read in isolation. When a question asks for the mood running through all of the lines, the correct option must fit the dominant feeling of every stanza, not just the closing one.
Across the extract the speaker repeatedly uses admiring, intensifying adjectives — 'wonderful' (five times, in the first two stanzas), 'beautiful'/'beautifully' (twice, in the first stanza), and 'friendly' (in the third stanza) — and personifies the wind in the second stanza as a lively, almost playful presence that walks on water, whirls mills, and talks to itself on hilltops. Even the final stanza, which opens with the speaker feeling small, resolves upward into a proud declaration — 'You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!' This progression, from admiring description to a triumphant close, is the hallmark of a mood of delight and celebration, not of gravity, sorrow, or sustained self-questioning.
Checking each option against this pattern:
'serious' would need sober, measured language throughout — instead the extract repeatedly returns to superlative, admiring adjectives like 'wonderful' and 'beautiful' rather than restrained description.
'sad' would need vocabulary of loss, grief, or longing — none appears anywhere in the four stanzas; 'tremble' here marks awe at scale, not sorrow.
'introspective' fits only the final stanza's reflective turn, not the entire extract — the first three stanzas are straightforward, admiring description with no self-questioning at all.
So the mood sustained across the whole extract is one of joyous wonder and celebration of the world.