What qualities has the old man imbibed over the years? Class 8 Chapter 2 - Old Man Travelling
Answers
Answer:
The little hedge-row birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought -- He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten, one to whom
Long patience has such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing, of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the old man hardly feels.
-- I asked him whither he was bound, and what
The object of his journey; he replied
"Sir! I am going many miles to take
"A last leave of my son, a mariner,
"Who, from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth,
"And there is dying in an hospital."
Explanation:
The poem that I chose to analyse (Old Man Travelling) from William Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads”, seems on the surface to be about an old man who is travelling on his own to take leave of his son. However, at a deeper level Wordsworth is highlighting the loneliness which men suffer in the course of our life.
First of all, as I mentioned before, one of the main ideas of the poem is that men are born alone and we remain alone during our lifetime. This idea, connected to the romantic conception of the man, being himself in contact with nature, is patently obvious in the first four verses of the poem, where the poet is using the image of “little birds” and above all, the explanation of the traveller’s expression, the way he walks and even the fact that he is not moving with pain, but absorbed in his own thoughts.