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 the line, ‘with the wonderful water round you curled’, the word ‘curled’ means:
- A.
arched
- B.
surrounded
- C.
mounted
- D.
turbulent
Attempted by 1 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
CONCEPT: In poetry, an everyday word often carries a figurative sense rather than its most common literal one — the preposition it pairs with and the surrounding imagery point to which sense is meant. Here, "curled round" pairs with "you" (the world), so the word must describe a spatial relationship of encircling, not a shape, a position on top, or a state of motion.
APPLICATION: The poem addresses the "world" and describes the natural features that dress it — the line reads "the wonderful water round you curled." Read together, "round you curled" says the water wraps all the way around the globe, exactly as an ocean encircles the Earth. Among the choices, only "surrounded" names this complete encircling action.
"arched" describes a curved, bow-like shape rising over a single point, like a bridge or a rainbow — it does not capture wrapping all the way around, which "round you" describes.
"mounted" describes something fixed or placed on top of a surface — the opposite of wrapping all the way around.
"turbulent" describes the water's own rough, churning motion, not its position relative to the earth — nothing in the line suggests roughness.
RESULT: So "curled round you" means the water surrounds (encircles) the world — the keyed answer, "surrounded," is correct.