English ISC Poetry poems 2010

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Flute music
By Rabindranath Tagore

Kinu, the milkman's alley
A ground floored room in a two storeyed valley
Slap on the road, window barred.
Decaying walls, windows crumbling to dust in places
Or strained with damp.
Stuck on the floor,
A picture of Ganesha,Bringer of Success,
From the end of a bale of cloth.
Another creature apart from me lives in my room
For the same rent;
A lizard.
There's one difference between him and me:
He doesn't go hungry.

I get twenty five rupees a month
As junior clerk in a trading office.
I'm fed at the Dattas' house
For coaching their boy.
At dusk I go to Sealdah station.
Spend the evening there
To save the cost of light.
Engines chuffing,
Whistles shrieking,
Passengers scurrying,
Coolies shouting.
I stay till half past ten,
Then back to my dark,silent,lonely room.

A village on the Dhalesvari river, that's where my aunt's people live.
Her brother-in-law's daughter -
She was due to marry my unfortunate self, everything was fixed.
The moment was indeed auspicious for her, no doubt of that -
For I ran away.
The girl was saved from me,
And I from her.
She did not come to this room, but she's in and out of my mind all the time:
Dacca sari, vermilion on her forehead.

Pouring rain.
My tram costs go up,
But often as not my pay gets cut for lateness.
Along the alley,
Mango skins and stones, jack fruit pulp,
Fish-gills, dead kittens
And God knows what other rubbish
Pile up and rot.
My umbrella is like my depleted pay -
Full of holes.
My sopping office clothes ooze
Like a pious Vaisnava.
Monsoon darkness
sticks in my damp room
Like an animal caught in a dead trap,
Lifeless and numb.
day and night I feel strapped bodily
On to a half-dead world.

At the corner of the alley lives Kantababu -
Long hair, carefully parted,
Large eyes.
Cultivated tastes.
He fancies himself on the cornet:
The sound of it comes in gusts
On the foul breeze of the alley -
Sometimes in the middle of the night,
Sometimes in the early morning twilight,
Sometimes in the afternoon
When sun and shadows glitter.
Suddenly this evening
He starts to play runs in Sindhu-Baroya rag,
And the whole sky rings
With eternal pangs of separation.
At once the alley is a lie,
False and vile as the ravings of a drunkard,
And I feel that nothing distinguishes Haripada the clerk
From the Emperor Akbar.
Torn umbrella and royal parasol merge,
Rise on the sad music of a flute
Towards one heaven.

The music is true,
Where, in the everlasting twilight-hour of my wedding,
The Dhalesvari river flows,
Its banks deeply shaded by tamal-trees,
And she who waits in the courtyard
Is dressed in a dacca sari, vermillion on her forehead.

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A Walk By Moonlight

Last night — it was a lovely night,
And I was very blest —
Shall it not be for Memory
A happy spot to rest?

Yes; there are in the backward past
Soft hours to which we turn —
Hours which, at distance, mildly shine,
Shine on, but never burn.

And some of these but yesternight
Across my path were thrown,
Which made my heart so very light,
I think it could have flown.

I had been out to see a friend
With whom I others saw:
Like minds to like minds ever tend —
An universal law.

And when we were returning home,
"Come who will walk with me,
A little way", I said, and lo!
I straight was joined by three:

Three whom I loved — two had high thoughts
And were, in age, my peers;
And one was young, but oh! endeared
As much as youth endears.

The moon stood silent in the sky,
And looked upon our earth:
The clouds divided, passing by,
In homage to her worth.

There was a dance among the leaves
Rejoicing at her power,
Who robes for them of silver weaves
Within one mystic hour.

There was a song among the winds,
Hymning her influence —
That low-breathed minstrelsy which binds
The soul to thought intense.

And there was something in the night
That with its magic wound us;
For we — oh! we not only saw,
But felt the moonlight around us.

How vague are all the mysteries
Which bind us to our earth;
How far they send into the heart
Their tones of holy mirth;

How lovely are the phantoms dim
Which bless that better sight,
That man enjoys when proud he stands
In his own spirit's light;

When, like a thing that is not ours.
This earthliness goes by,
And we behold the spiritualness
Of all that cannot die.

'Tis then we understand the voice
Which in the night-wind sings,
And feel the mystic melody
Played on the forest's strings.

The silken language of the stars
Becomes the tongue we speak,
And then we read the sympathy
That pales the young moon's cheek.

The inward eye is open then
To glories, which in dreams
Visit the sleeper's couch, in robes
Woven of the rainbow's beams.

I bless my nature that I am
Allied to all the bliss,
Which other worlds we're told afford,
But which I find in this.

My heart is bettered when I feel
That even this human heart
To all around is gently bound,
And forms of all a part;

That, cold and lifeless as they seem,
The flowers, the stars, the sky
Have more than common minds may deem
To stir our sympathy.

Oh! in such moments can I crush
The grass beneath my feet?
Ah no; the grass has then a voice,
Its heart — I hear it beat.

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Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson

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Journey Of The Magi by T. S. Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and
grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the
lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns
unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all
night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,
saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a
temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of
vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in
away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with
vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for
pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth,
certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had
seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;
this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their
gods.
I should be glad of another death.

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Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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abhas bt y r u postin dese poems??

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no special reason.... i found them on net so i posted them here.... they might be useful in future in quoting lines if we are discussing them.... are ppl also having these poems .....

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i guess i hv dese

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Is it compulsory that we should attempt all three textbooks in the Section B in Eng II..??

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Ganu wrote:: Is it compulsory that we should attempt all three textbooks in the Section B in Eng II..??

No it is not! 2 books r enough.

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Guess questions for poetry:
1)Elegy written in a country churchyard
2)Story of lost friends
3)Essay on an Indian poem

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My teachers were expecting contemporary relevance on any poem of our choice. What r u expecting for Macbeth?

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thanks anjanavr47...! i just had a doubt..!

@ geethu248

Macbeth, i'm expcting something from the sleep walking scene or the Apparitions scene...!
Ultimately all these assumptions will be literally out in the trash box...when we see our qn paper...!

this is my guess..! whats urs..?

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There will be one ques from scene and one general.. so the former can be either the sleepwalking or apparitions.. but it can also be the significance of opening scene.. General questions.. something like supernatural element, dramatic irony, poetic justice, or any theme... This play has lots of themes so i am juz prep for a 'theme' ques coz that's 60% sure.

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anjanavr47 wrote:: Guess questions for poetry:
1)Elegy written in a country churchyard
2)Story of lost friends
3)Essay on an Indian poem

Can u be more specific when u say "Essay on a Indian Poem"?

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my teacher has told that 1)prayer before the birth 2)lost friends 3)journey of the Magi are most important.... YEAR - English ISC Poetry poems 2010 Icon_surprised

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But Journey of the Magi came twice in past 10 years.. Story of Lost Friends is the most imp as it has never come.. But if we want to be on safe sid ehave to do it.. u never knw what's in the paper right?

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back to the topic of "an indian poem"..

there are only two:
1. A hot noon in malabar
2. flute music

story of lost friends can't be considered as an Indian poem even though it's setting is in india,
its written by Ruskin Bond, whos we all know is not an Indian..

In macbeth, questns are expected from act 1, 2 for extract and the show of 8 kings in the apparition scene has a decent importance, also the sleep walking scene is in the fray

in Poetry, im expectng from Elegy, Lost frnds and hot noon in malabar..

@saif:
plz dont mistake my audacity but when you are quoting from a poem, or even writing a heading of a question, plz make sure that the title is exactly same.
Even things like missing the "A" in "A walk by moonlight" would mean you getting no marks for that question.
Plz trust me as i lost 2 questns similarly in my models. My teacher always goes for the board examination paper correction and she always corrects by means of board method.

plz dont mind my long post
Smile

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Hey guys....'The Story of Lost Friends' is almost sure to come....but I've heard that there might be a question on comparing two poems...either in their use of language...or in the way they deal with the subject concerned....any of you heard of anything as such ?? YEAR - English ISC Poetry poems 2010 Icon_question

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Yeah something like that may come... Expectations are there..!

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anyone can help me with the "flute music"...??

help me with some notes...

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do u use any guide?

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i have the ISC poetry study notes cum workbook...!!

im not at all satisfied with the notes in that...! do you have a better alternative..??

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@Ganu:What I have posted below if from my own notes. I hope it helps you!

And if anybody finds any mistakes in the essay please feel free to point in out.

Flute Music

Flute music is a poem written by Rabindranath Tagore. It is a story of a middle class clerk, Haripada. He stays in the milkman’s alley, in the ground-floor of a two-storey building. His room is right on the main road. The room is described to have its windows barred, the walls decaying and crumbling into dust in several places and stained by the dampness of monsoons.

The poet indicates the pathos in his life by referring to the picture of Lord Ganesha stuck on the door. Ganesha is considered as the bringer of success, which is ironic in case of Haripada. He is said to share his room with a lizard for the same rent. This is symbolic of the poet’s humor. Another symbol of pathos arises when the poet says that the only difference between Haripada and the lizard is that the lizard never goes hungry.

Haripada earns twenty-five rupees a month. He works as
a junior clerk in a trading office. He teaches the boy at the Datta’s house in return for his daily meal. At dusk, Haripada goes to Sealdah station to spend the evening there so that he could go economical by saving the cost of light at his own residence. The poet uses onomatopoeic words to describe the atmosphere in the railway station, such as, engines chuffing, whistles shrieking, passengers’ scurrying and so on. Haripada stays there till half past ten. He then returns to his ‘lonely room’.

His aunt stays in a village on the Dhalesvari River. She arranged an alliance for him with his brother-in-law’s daughter. The moment was auspicious for the girl indeed. But Haripada ran away from the village so that he could save the girl from him. This expression can be considered humorous but indeed indicates the extreme pathos in Haripada’s life. But he says that the girl is in and out of his mind all the time. The poet describes the girl in a Dacca sari with vermilion on her forehead.

During monsoons the tram costs go up. From what little
Haripada earns, his pay gets cut for lack of punctuality. He says, along the alley mango skins, jack-fruit pulp, fish gills, dead kittens and many other things pile up and rot. Haripada says that his umbrella is like his depleted pay. It is full of holes. Due to this very reason his office clothes become
drenched in rain water as if he were pious Vaishnava who took a dip in the holy river. The monsoons darken his room and make the walls damp. He returns to his room and feels like he were an animal caught in a trap. He feels that he is bodily strapped or tied to the half dead world of his own room.

At the corner of the milkman’s alley stays Kantababu. He is described to have long hair carefully parted, large eyes and sophisticated taste. Kantababu fancies himself as a great cornet player. The sound of his flute music comes through the foul breeze of the alley, sometime in the middle of the night, in the early morning twilight or in the afternoon.

One fine evening Kantababu suddenly started to play his flute in Sindhu-Baroya raga, which signifies intense feeling of separation and pain. And then Haripada feels that the entire alley is a lie, as false as what a man speaks when drunk heavily. He then feels that there is no difference between himself and Emperor Akbar. He is unable to distinguish between the royal parasol and his torn umbrella. In the presence of the flute music he feels that all rise but to one heaven.

The poet emphasizes that the flute music is true all though in its presence the rest seems nothing but a lie. Haripada then
remembers the twilight of his wedding hour, the Dhalesvari River, its bank covered with tamal-trees. He remembers the girl in a Dacca sari, vermillion on her forehead, waiting for him in the courtyard.

diptojit wrote:: Hey guys....'The Story of Lost Friends' is almost sure to come....but I've heard that there might be a question on comparing two poems...either in their use of language...or in the way they deal with the subject concerned....any of you heard of anything as such ??