Answer these questions.
1. What is the journey like as the train crosses the border?
2. Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; They slumber on with paws across.
What do you think the dogs feel about the passing of the train?
How do other animals react?
3. When does the train approach Glasgow? What does Glasgow look like
at this time?
4. Is the train under pressure to be on time? How do you know?
5. List the types of mail the train carries.
Answers
Answer:
1a) The train is crossing the border overnight with mail, bringing letters and checks and orders for rich and poor. Though the way is steep, she is still on time. She passes moors and boulders, her white steam flowing behind her. She noisily passes through the “silent miles” of grassland.
2a)W.H Audin was born on 21 february 1907.He was M.A English . He lived in Newyork city of America. His father was a medical officer in school.He read English literature in Christchurch oxford. He wanted to become a mining engineer. But in the age of 13 he stared to write poems in school time. He published his first poetry book in 1930. He was also a very good tutor and teacher.He became a teacher in boys school for five years .All students liked and loved him .
He was the best teacher.He also taught English in University of Michigan. He was the professor of poetry in Oxford university. Three times in a year he went there.He also got many awards as Guggenhein fellowship awrard.
He won fame in social and political circles.
Auden showed a deep interest in language and metaphor,satire and parody which are dazzling and sometimes cruel.He is lively and provocative,,skilled and igneous.
He had keenly interested in writing Opera librettos. He expressed his feelings through it . He was also a writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects. He worked at various documentary films and poetic plays. He was died on 29 september 1973.
Night Mail (poem)
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
3a) The train approaches Glasgow on the dawn time.
All the dwellers were in deep sleep at that time when the train was approaching Glasgow but it disturbed their sleep since the jug shake due to the passing of the train.
4a) It's not under pressure
5a) Night mail poem is about a train that carries mails, chequeens and postal orders. the poet personifies the Night Mail giving it human attributes as it travels through a pastoral set-up. The train is not an ordinary one; it is a night mail that comes at night.
Explanation: