UNIT – 1 PROSE
1. My Financial Career– Stephen Leacock
2. Secret of Work– Swami Vivekananda
UNIT -2 POETRY
1. Where the Mind is Without Fear – Rabindranath Tagore
2. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
3. The World is Too Much With Us – William Wordsworth.
UNIT-3 SHORT STORY :
1. The Gift of the Magi – O Henry
2. Rip Van Winkle – Irving Washington
UNIT -4 ONE ACT PLAY :
Marriage Proposal – Anton Chekov
UNIT-5: I- GRAMMAR :
1. Verb
2. Adverb
3. Concord
4. Tenses
II COMPOSITION :
5. Report Writing
6. Reading Comprehension
Important questions and answers :
Where the Mind is Without Fear By Rabindranath Tagore?
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high?
Where knowledge is free?
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments?
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore is one of the best Indian writers. The poem “Where the mind is without fear” was written during the time when India was struggling to free itself from British rule. In this poem, he expresses his love for his country and prays to the Almighty for his well-being. The poem was written in one sentence. Metaphor and personification have been used in different parts of the poem.
About The Poet: Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata). He was not only a writer, but also a painter, a philosopher, and a composer. The poem ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ has been taken from his Nobel-winning collection of poems ‘Gitanjali’, a profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse.
It was originally written in Bengali and subsequently translated into English by Rabindranath Tagore himself. In this poem, the noble laureate beautifully pours out his overwhelmed heart in his much-praised literary work “Where The Mind Is Without Fear” in which he exhibits his vision of a hassle-free nation by bestowing his heartfelt reliance on the master of the Universe.
From a feminist point of view, this poem is appreciated as an inspiration for the woman race to improve their social status and economic status. Women of India need to come out of their narrow domestic walls by increased means of education and social justice. This thought-provoking poem also conveys the idea of eliminating the dreary desert sand of dead habits like Sati System, Dowry, and Child Marriage, etc from our Indian Culture to uplift our Indian Women.
Our Women shell actively support and participate in the nationalist movement and secure eminent positions and offices in administration and public life in free India. This research article aims at stimulating the country to raise the voice for the freedom of women. It channelizes the empowerment of women by directing their efforts towards perfection.
About the poem: Where the Mind is Without Fear’ is one of his well-known poems of Rabindranath Tagore. It was initially written in Bengali, under the title ‘Prarthana’, which means supplication.
This poem appeared in the volume called ‘Naibedya’ in 1901. Tagore composed this poem when India was under the grasp of British reign. He composed this poem to energize the countrymen, to ingrain heroic qualities and morale in their souls and brains.
The poet mourns the pitiful plight of Indians and in a manner reveals the people’s wretched state of being now downtrodden. They were in the clutches of cruel British rule. Tagore pours out his dream of the features of a splendid country That is his utopia in a manner.
He dwells on the theme of spiritual liberty, freedom of mind, expression, beliefs, methods and thought, as well as political freedom. He wants to put forth uselessness of blind faith and superstition and heavily comment on the role of logical reasoning in our country’s prosperity.
In this poem published in days of pre-independence, the poet skillfully writes about happy heaven where all people of his country will be free from all sorts of bias and prejudice and not fragmented by narrow walls.
He sketches a moving picture of the nation. He wants India to be a nation in the fold of brotherhood, a nation without fear of oppression and without apprehension. The poem reflects the utmost faith of the poet in God to whom he pleads to guide his countrymen.
Summary of Where the Mind is Without Fear
The poem, ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear…’, has been written by the poet in the form of a prayer to God for the true freedom of his country. The poet wishes for his country to be free from the oppressive rule of the colonizers.
Once the country is free, everybody would live fearlessly and have confidence in themselves. The poet visualises a nation where knowledge is accessible to one and all since knowledge and education alone will lead the people from darkness to light.
The poet wishes for a nation where people are not divided based on caste, colour, creed, class, etc. The people of such a nation would be truthful and would speak from the depth of their hearts. In such a country, the people would give their best and work hard, which would ultimately make them achieve their goal of perfection.
It is the dream of the poet that he wants his countrymen to have the power of reason and not to give in to age-old superstitious beliefs. He prays to God to help his countrymen progress so that they become individuals who are logical, progressive and have a broad-minded outlook. He requests God to guide his countrymen into the heaven of freedom, where all that he has prayed for comes true.
Tagore thus sketches out the ideal form of freedom and not merely political freedom that he desires for his country. He aspires to bring about an awakening in a country that is enslaved both, politically and intellectually.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow. J
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Lee Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. His works were published in England before becoming popular in the United States. His writing often featured his life in rural New England and Vermont. In 1961, Front was appointed Poet Laureate of Vermont. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by written by Frost in 1922 at his home in Vermont. Frost had said this poem came through a hallucination, and he completed the poem in just a few minutes.
In 1923 collection “New Hampshire” contains the poems “Fire and Ice,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “The Lockless Door.” The piece “Fire and Ice” is a brilliant example of Frost’s skill.The poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” another of his most famous works, combines an autobiographical experience with discussion of the conflict between desire and responsibility in a classic New England setting.
Robert Frost wrote “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” in 1922, two years before winning the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes. The poem tells the story of a man traveling through some snowy woods on the darkest evening of the year, and he’s pretty much in love with what he sees around him. He’s on his way back to town, but he can’t quite tear himself away from the lovely and dark woods.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Summary
The speaker thinks about who owns the woods that he or she is passing through, and is fairly sure of knowing the landowner. However, the owner’s home is far away in the village, and thus he is physically incapable of seeing the speaker pause to watch the snow fall in the forest.
The speaker thinks his or her horse must find it strange to stop so far from any signs of civilization. Indeed, they are surrounded only by the forest and a frozen lake, on the longest night of the year.
The horse shakes the bells on its harness, as if asking if the speaker has made a mistake by stopping. The only other sound besides the ringing of these bells is that of the wind and falling snowflakes, which the speaker likens to the feathers of goose down.
The speaker finds the woods very alluring, drawn both to their darkness and how vast and all-encompassing they seem. However, the speaker has obligations to fulfill elsewhere. Thus, though he or she would like to stay and rest, the speaker knows there are many more miles to go before that will be possible.
The World Is Too Much With Us by william wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Wordsworth’s Poetical Works Study Guide
William Wordsworth, along with Robert Southey and Samuel Coleridge, is one of the “Lakeland Poets,” a group that is widely credited with beginning the English Romantic Movement. The movement was characterized by a rejection of the Enlightenment, which focused on reason, logic, and structure.
Romanticism, on the other hand, focuses on emotion and imagination. Often the poets are called “nature poets” because of their emphasis on man’s connection to nature. Wordsworth addressed this connection in poems such as “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” “Ode; Intimations of Immortality,” and “I wandered lonely as a cloud.
” The stress placed on the importance of imagination and the sublime in the English Romantic Movement subsequently inspired the American Romantic Movement, which was headed by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and followed up by Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others. The most famous poets of the English Romantic Movement are William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.
Wordsworth’s poetry is distinguished by his straightforward use of language and meter and his natural and often colloquial themes and imagery. This is not to say, however, that Wordsworth’s ideas are simple. He weaves several ideas throughout his poetic works, including the importance of the natural world, transcendentalism and interconnectedness, religion, morality, mortality, memory and the power of the human mind.
Wordsworth began publishing in 1793, at the age of 23, with a collection of poetry about a tour he took in the Swiss Alps – Descriptive Sketches. In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems anonymously. In 1800 the two published another edition of Lyrical Ballads that included Wordsworth’s famous preface highlighting several of the key ideas of the Romantic Movement.
Wordsworth published Elegiac Stanzas and Poems in two volumes in 1803 and 1805 respectively, followed by The Excursion in 1812, Collected Poems in 1815, and Peter Bell and The Waggoner in 1819. Wordsworth published Ecclesiastical Sketches in 1822. After Wordsworth’s death, his wife published Preface, which was previously known only as “Poem for Coleridge.” At the time of his death, Wordsworth was known in England as the best poet in the world.
“The world is too much with us” – In this rather angry poem, the speaker is disgusted by people who prefer manufactured goods to the joys of nature. In the end Wordsworth chooses a state of disillusionment over disconnection from nature.
Summary of “The world is too much with us”
The speaker begins this poem by saying that the world is too full of humans who are losing their connection to divinity and, even more importantly, to nature. Humans, the speaker says, have given their hearts away, and the gift is a morally degraded one:
In the second quartet the speaker tells the reader that everything in nature, including the sea and the winds, is gathered up in a powerful connection with which humanity is “out of tune.” In other words, humans are not experiencing nature as they should:
The speaker ends the poem by saying that he would rather be a pagan attached to a worn-out system of beliefs than be out of tune with nature. At least if he were a pagan he might be able to see things that would make him less unhappy, like the sea gods Proteus and Triton.