Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow.
Every tinkle on the shingles
Has an echo in the heart;
And a thousand dreamy fancies
Into busy being start
(a) Explain ‘tinkle on the shingles’.
(b)What does the expression ‘dreamy fancies’ refer to?
(c)Which poetic device has been used in the last line of the stanza?
(d)What echoes in the poet’s heart?
Answers
a) The poet is expressing his feelings when he hears the raindrops falling on the roof top of his house. He says that every tinkle on the shingles has an echo in the heart. Whenever he hears rain falling on the roof top, the sound repeats in his heart and in his dreams, he has many different, fanciful imaginations.
b) The phrase “thousand dreamy fancies into busy being start” means that our mind is always teeming with imaginations. The word thousand refers to the innumerable number of imagination and dreamy fancies refer to imagination. These imaginations keep our mind busy all the time.
c) Onomatopoeia
d) Every raindrop that falls on the tin roof produces an echo in the poet's heart. ... With every patter sound of raindrops, the poet relives his childhood memories.