Question

Question 1.
The cardboard shows me how it was
When the two girl cousins went paddling,
Each one holding one of my mother’s hands
And she, the big girl — some twelve year or so.
Answer the following.
(i) These lines describe …………..
(ii) …………. girls went paddling.
(iii) The word ‘cardboard’ conveys a sense of loneliness.
Question 2.
All three stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle with the camera. A sweet face,
My mother’s, that was before I was born.
And the sea, which appears to have changed less,
Washed their terribly transient feet.
Answer the following.
(i) These lines have been taken from …………… composed by ………………..
(ii) The three mentioned in the first line are ………………….
(iii) A deep and significant contrast has been drawn in the last two lines between the sea and the humans by using the phrases …………….. and ………………….
Question 3.
Some twenty-thirty years later
She’d laugh at the snapshot
“See Betty
And Dolly;” she’d say, “and look how they
dressed us for the beach ” The sea holiday
Was her past, mine is her laughter.
Answer the following.
(i) ……………. are mother’s cousins.
(ii) ………………. would laugh seeing the snapshot.
(iii) The beach holiday took place …………..
Question 4.
…………. A sweet face,
My mother’s, that was before I was born.
And the sea, which appears to have changed less,
Washed their terribly transient feet.
Answer the following.
(i) These lines are from ……………. and the poet is …………..
(ii) ………….. has not changed much.
(iii) The phrase ‘terribly transient feet’ indicates …………….
Question 5.
…………….. The sea holiday
Was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry
With the laboured ease of loss.
Answer the following.
(i) ‘Her’ refers to …………….
(ii) ‘Her past’ means …………….. by the sea.
(iii) ‘Both wry with the laboured ease of loss’ means the poet’s and her mother’s past, loss of the
happy sea holiday. [True/False]
Question 6.
Now she’s been dead nearly as many years
As that girl lived. And of this circumstance
There is nothing to say at all.
Its silence silences.
Answer the following.
(i) has been dead for twelve years.
(ii) ‘This circumstance’ refers to ……….
(iii) The meaning of the last line is that death is ……………

Answer 1

Answer 1:

(i) a photograph

(ii) Three

(iii) True

Answer 2:

(i) A Photograph; Shirley Toulson

(ii) the poet’s mother and her two cousins

(iii) changed less; terribly transient feet.

Answer 3:

(i) Betty and Dolly

(ii) The poetess’ mother

(iii) twenty-thirty years ago

Answer 4:

(i) ‘A Photograph’; Shirley Toulson.

(ii) The sea

(iii) The mother

Answer 5:

(i) the poet’s mother.

(ii) a pleasant holiday

(iii) True

Answer 6:

(i) The poetess mother

(ii) the death of the poetess’ mother.

(iii) final and irrevocable.