What does the shadow of the poet always do?
Answers
Answer: always follow to the poet
Explanation:
Answer:
Stanza 1:
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed
In this stanza, the boy is fantacised with his shadow, and likes to observe it. He says that he has a little shadow that is always present with him when he is going out anywhere in the sun. The boy knows that there is more that he can do with the shadow than just observing it following him around everywhere. The boy says that it is just like him from the heel to the head. Here, the poet uses “heel to head” to show that the boy is fascinated that the shadow is connected to him from the heel, and then grows towards the head. The boy is excited to see how it is always ahead of him, and jumps in the bed before he does. He gets excited to see how the shadow is always following him, but is always ahead of him too.
Stanza 2:
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
The boy is fantasised by how the shadow grows abnormally like he has never seen before. He says that the shadow grows faster, unlike the normal kids, who grow slower than him. He also gets excited to see how the shadow grows bigger all of a sudden without his knowledge, and sometimes it is so small that it is not seen at all. He is surprised by how the shadow grows big and small everyday, which h he has not seen happening to anyone or anything else around him.
Stanza 3:
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
The boy now says that his shadow does not how the normal kids are ought to play and have fun around. He says that the shadow does not know how to behave like the normal children, but only fool him around with its tricks in all the possible ways that the boy could think of. The boy says that it stays very close to him when he is playing and running around. He thinks that the shadow is a coward, and cannot leave him. It only stays behind him, and follows him wherever he goes.
Stanza 4:
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in
The poet now describes a moment when the boy got up from his bed in the early morning before sunrise. He woke to a beautiful dewy morning, where he saw dew shining on every leaf. The sun was only in the horizon, and there was not much light around him, and he could not see his shadow. The poet portrays the excitement of the boy to see that for the first time his shadow was not following him, and he says that his shadow felt lazy and stayed behind at home. While he was enjoying the sunrise, his shadow stayed at his bed. This also means, that when the boy got in the bed, his shadow went in with him, but when he got out of it in the morning, his shadow didn’t come along. You may be go through the detailed analysis of the poem here