Gujarat Board GSEB Class 9 English Textbook Solutions Beehive Poem 10 A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.

Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 9 English Beehive Poem 10 A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

GSEB Class 9 English A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Text Book Questions and Answers

Thinking about the Poem

Question 1.
“A slumber did my spirit seal,” says the poet. That is, a deep sleep ‘closed off’ his soul (or mind). How does the poet react to his loved one’s death? Does he feel bitter grief? Or does he feel great peace?
Answer:
Though his loved one’s death has left the poet numb and the ‘common human fears’ no longer affected him, his reaction cannot be labelled as ‘bitter grief’. This is because, by the end of the poem, we come to know that the poet imagines her to be a part of nature, rotating with the earth on its axis.

He takes consolation from the fact that she is still alive in the nature and is beyond life’s trials. This promotes the idea that he feels a ‘great peace’ of mind. Thus, we can conclude that the poet’s feelings are ambiguous.

Question 2.
The passing of time will no longer affect her, says the poet. Which lines of the poem say this?
Answer:
The lines of the poem that show that the passing of time will no longer affect her are as follows:
“She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.”

Question 3.
How does the poet imagine her to be, after death? Does he think of her as a person living in a very happy state (a ‘heaven’)?
OR
Does he see her now as a part of nature? In which lines of the poem do you find your answer?
Answer:
The poet’s imagination does not allow him to think of his dead loved one as a person living in a very happy state or in heaven. Rather he imagines her to be a part of nature, being buried under the earth. She rotates with the earth, along with the stones, rocks and trees.

The lines in the poem which show this are as follows:
“Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course With rocks and stones and trees.”

GSEB Class 9 English A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Additional Important Questions and Answers

Reading Comprehension
Read the following stanza and answer the question given below it:

A slumber did my spirit seal-
I had no human fears.
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force –
She neither hears nor sees,
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.
Questions :
(1) What kind of poem is this?
(2) ‘She seemed a thing’ what do these words suggest?
(3) Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line :
‘She neither hears nor sees.’
Answer:
(1) This poem is an ‘elegy’ written on the death of the poet’s beloved.
(2) This words suggest that the poet’s beloved has died and now she is a thing, i.e., an inanimate object.
(3) The Figure of Speech in the line – ‘She neither hears nor sees’ is Litotes. With two negative words, it is emphasised that she is no more a living human being.

Figures of Speech
Choose the most appropriate Figures of Speech in the following lines :

Question 1.
‘A slumber did my spirit seal’-
A. Alliteration
B. Personification
C. Metaphor
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’

Question 2.
‘No motion has she now, no force’-
A. Tautology
B. Repetition
C. Litotes
D. All of these three
Answer:
D. All of these three

Question 3.
She neither hears nor sees.
A. Litotes
B. Repetition
C. Personification
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
A. Litotes

Answer the following questions in three to four sentences each :

Question 1.
What happened to the poet’s beloved?
Answer:
The poet’s beloved was dead. She was not alive now. The poet remembers her beloved through this poem.

Question 2.
How does she become an inseparable part of nature?
Answer:
She becomes an integral part of nature. She is rolled round in earth’s daily course with rocks, stones and trees.

Question 3.
How will time not affect the poet’s beloved?
Answer:
The poet’s beloved is dead and a dead thing becomes immortal. It is a universally accepted fact that immortality is not affected by time or the physical world. She cannot hear or see. She has gone beyond the physical world.

Question 4.
Explain the symbol in the poem ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’?
Answer:
A symbol is an image which suggests or represents something other than itself. In this poem, ‘Slumber’ stands for the lack of knowing on the part of the speaker/poet.

Question 5.
Explain the Irony in the poem ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’.
Answer:
The speaker describes his beloved as having ‘no motion or force’ and she is ‘revolving with the earth around the sun’ actually implies she is dead and the speaker cannot be with her. This is also because the speaker, unlike his beloved was always alienated from nature. This mismatch between what is said and what is meant is an example of Irony.

Question 6.
Identify and explain the Figures of Speech in the following line: A slumber did my spirit seal.
Answer:
(a) Alliteration. As the sound ‘S’ (Slumber, Spirit, Seal) is repeated.
(b) Metaphor. There is an implicit comparison between the speaker’s ignorance of his beloved’s mortal nature and ‘sleep’ or ‘slumber’, which ‘sealed’ the speaker’s ‘spirit’.
The touch of ‘earthly years’ is another metaphor in the poem.

Question 7.
What is the rhyme scheme in the poem ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’?
Answer:
The rhyme scheme in this poem is ‘abab cdcd’.

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Summary in English

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Introduction:
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770- 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English Literature with their joint publication ‘Lyrical Ballads’, Wordsworth’s masterpiece was ‘The Prelude’. He was Britain’s poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy.

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Summary:
This poem is about the death of a loved one and poet’s feeling about his beloved when he thinks about her death. Poem also describes his imagination about his beloved after death. This poem is a kind of elegy. In this poem, the poet seems to be immortalizing her death by saying that she had no human fears. Now earthly years were no longer a matter of concern for her because they cannot make her older now.

In the second stanza, he is describing her dead body. She is not able to perform any of the physical movements or activities now. In the last two lines, the poet describes that she is now under the surface of the earth revolving along with it on its path. He tells us that like other stones, rocks and trees, she also revolves with the earth now.