The Banyan Tree
--Rabindranath Tagore
O you shaggy –headed banyan tree standing on the bank of the pond,
Have you forgotten the little child,
Like the birds that have nested in your branches and left you?
Do you remember how he sat at the window
And wondered at the tangle of your roots that plunged
Underground?
The women would come to fill their jars in the pond,
And your huge black shadow would wriggle
On the water like sleep struggling to wake up.
Sunlight danced on the ripple like
Restless tiny shuttles weaving golden tapestry.
Two ducks swam by woody margin above their shadows,
And the child would sit still and think.
He longed to be the wind and blow through your rustling branches,
To be your shadow and lengthen with the day on the water,
To be the bird and perch on the topmost twig,
And to float like those ducks among the weeds and shadows.
Answer the following questions:
1. Where was the banyan tree?
2. From where was the child watching the tree?
3. What were the things the child saw?
4. In stanza 1 who is being spoken to ?What was the comparison being made?
5. Pick out and write two examples of similes from the above poem.
Answers
Answer:
Answer:
The following circumstances led to the outbreak of revolutionary protest in France:
Louis XVI was an autocratic ruler who could not compromise with his luxurious life. He also lacked farsightedness.
When he ascended the throne the royal treasury was empty. Long years of war had drained the financial resources of France. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles.
Under Louis XVI France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their independence from Britain the war added more than a billion livres to a dept credit, now began to charge 10% interest on loans. So the French government was obliged to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest payments alone.
The state finally increased taxes to meet its regular expenses su?h as the cost of maintaining an army, running government offices and universities.
The French society was divided into three estates but only members of the first two estates i.e,, the clergy and the nobles were exempted to pay taxes. They belonged to privileged class. Thus the burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne by the third estate only.
The middle class that emerged in the 18th century France was educated and enlightened. They refuted the theory of divine rights of the kings and absolute monarchy. They believed that a person’s social position must depend on his merit. They had access to the various ideas of equality and freedom proposed by philosophers like John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu etc. Their ideas got popularised among the common mass as a result of intensive discussions and debates in saloons and coffee houses and through books and newspapers.
The French administration was extremely corrupt. It did not give weightage to the French Common man.
The state finally increased taxes to meet its regular expenses such as the cost of maintaining an army, running government offices and universities.