GSEB Solutions Class 11 English Hornbill Poem 2 The Laburnum Top

Gujarat Board GSEB Class 11 English Textbook Solutions Hornbill Poem 2 The Laburnum Top Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.

Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 11 English Hornbill Poem 2 The Laburnum Top

GSEB Class 11 English The Laburnum Top Text Book Questions and Answers

Find Out

Question 1.
What is laburnum called in your language.
Answer:
In Gujarati, it is called ‘Garmalo’.

Question 2.
Which local bird is like the goldfinch.
Answer:
‘Indian Lutino Ringneck’ is local bird like the goldfinch.

Think it Out

Question 1.
What do you notice about the beginning and the ending of the poem?
Answer:
In the beginning of the poem the tree is calm and silent and in the ending it ends with motionless and empty level.

Question 2.
To what is the bird’s movement compared? What is the basis for the comparison?
Answer:
The goldfinch’s movement is compared to that of a lizard. The basis of the comparison is the sleek, abrupt and alert movements of a lizard. The same kinds of movements are observed when the goldfinch arrives on the laburnum tree.

Question 3.
Why is the image of the engine evoked by the poet?
Answer:
The engine is the source of energy to run machine. It is compared to bird as she too is a source of energy for her family. As without engine a machine can’t work in the same without a mother bird her family can’t survive.

Question 4.
What do you like most about the poem?
Answer:
I like the simplicity and pictorial presentation of the poem. The comparison between bird’s movement with machine and Lizard is made in nice way. Also, chirruping and trilling of goldfinch bring to us audio imagery.

Question 5.
What does the phrase ‘her barred face identity mask’ mean?
Answer:
The phrase means that the bird’s barred or covered face becomes her identity mask for recognition.

Note Down

Question 1.
the sound words in the poem
Answer:
The sound words in this poem are chirrup, chitterings, trillings, whistle-chirrup.

Question 2.
the movement words in the poem :
Answer:
enters flirts out, stokes launches away

Question 3.
the dominant colour in the poem :
Answer:
Yellow

List the Following

Question 1.
Words which describe ‘sleek’, ‘alert’ and ‘abrupt’ in the poem.
Answer:
Words which describe ‘sleek’, ‘alert’ and ‘abrupt’ in the poem are: sleek – delicate alert – flirt abrupt – startlement

Question 2.
Words with the sound ‘ch’ as in ‘chart’ and ‘tr’ as in trembles in the poem.
Answer:
In the poem, the words with the sound ‘ch’ are ‘chirrup’ and ‘chitterlings’. The words with the sound ‘tr’ are ‘tremor’, ‘trillings’ and ‘trembles’.

Question 3.
Other sounds that occur frequently in the poem.
Answer:
The other sounds that occur frequently in the poem are listed below:
‘-st’ as in ‘still’, ‘startlement’ and ‘stokes’, ‘-ill’ as in ‘still’, ‘till’, ‘trillings’ and ‘thrills’, ‘ing’ as in ‘yellowing’, ‘twitching’, ‘chitterings’, ‘trillings’ and ‘whisperings’.

Thinking about Language

Look for some other poem on a bird or a tree in English or any other language.
Note: Students will search out such poems in English or in their mother tongue and enjoy them.

Try this Out

Write four lines in verse form on any tree that you see around you.
Answer:
A tree is a tree It is naked and It has no consciousness.
When it is cut
Does it feel, any pain?

GSEB Class 11 English The Laburnum Top Additional Important Questions and Answers

Answer the following questions in three to four sentences each:

Question 1.
What is ‘laburnum’ as mentioned in the poem ‘The Laburnum Top’?
Answer:
In the poem, ‘The Laburnum Top’ by the poet Ted Hughes, ‘laburnum’ is the golden chain tree which is a commonly found tree with golden flowers that hang in the bunches.

Question 2.
According to you what the ‘laburnum’ stands for in the poem?
Answer:
The late-twentieth-century poet Ted Hughes draws a very clear symbolism through this very figure of laburnum tree in the poem, ‘The Laburnum Top’. Actually, the laburnum symbolizes the hardships in life of every living being. It stands for the upheavals survival requirement all throughout one’s life.

Question 3.
How does the poem ‘The Laburnum Top’ begin?
Answer:
The poem ‘The Laburnum Top’ has – begun with an immense solitude. The very top of the laburnum tree is calm and silent with the fading yellowish sunlight in a solemn afternoon of September. The tree is standing with the remaining few dull yellow leaves and bereft of any seed.

Question 4.
What does startle the silent branches of the laburnum tree? What does it symbolize?
Answer:
The wild, small and yellow canary bird goldfinch with its chirping startles the silent branches of the tree. The sudden entry of the goldfinch pivotalizes the entrance of living actions in an utterly destitute self of something or someone. The silent and bereaving laburnum tree symbolizes the tyrannous condition of living being but that too often encounters with the jovial presence of another living self for the upliftment of latent wisdom of one.

Question 5.
To what is the bird’s movement compared? What is the basis for the comparison?
Answer:
The movement of the goldfinch is compared to that of a slow-moving and alert creature like lizard. There is a certain basis underneath this comparison between the goldfinch and the lizard. The comparison is based on the sleek, abrupt and alert movement what the goldfinch observes the movement it arrives on the laburnum tree.

Question 6.
Why is the image of the engine evoked by the poet?
Answer:
In a very superficial level, the engine is the source of the energy to run machine. This mechanism of engine has been internalized in this poem through the figure of goldfinch. It is compared to the bird as it too is a source of energy for the family. As without an engine any machine cannot work in the same “Way without the mother bird its family cannot survive.

Question 7.
‘She strokes it full…’ explain this phrase with reference to the poem.
Answer:
In this quoted phrase from Ted Hughes’ poem ‘The Laburnum Top’, ‘she’ refers to the goldfinch which acts as an engine to its entire family. ‘Strokes’ means adding fuel. In this very context of the poem, the goldfinch feeds its family, providing the fuel that is nutrition what the machine or the bird’s family needs to be energetic.

Question 8.
What does the phrase ‘her barred face identity mask’ mean?
Answer:
In the poem ‘The Laburnum Top’ the aforementioned phrase has been placed in order to represent the bird goldfinch itself. It means that the bird’s barred or covered face becomes its identity mask for recognition.

Question 9.
What similarity do you perceive about the beginning and the ending of the poem?
Answer:
A very noteworthy similarity has been perceived regarding the beginning and the ending of the poem. In the very beginning of the poem the tree is calm and silent and in the ending, it again is getting subsided with motionless and empty level.

Figures of Speech
Select the .correct figures of speech from the options given below:

Question 1.
‘In the afternoon yellow September sunlight’
A. Repetition
B. Metaphor
C. Alliteration
D. Antithesis
Answer:
C. Alliteration

Question 2.
‘Then sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt’
A. Personification
B. Repetition
C. Internal Rhyme
D. Simile
Answer:
D. Simile

Question 3.
‘Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings’
A. Metaphor
B. Onomatopoeia
C. Synecdoche
D. Metonymy
Answer:
B. Onomatopoeia

Question 4.
‘The whole tree trembles and thrills’
A. Alliteration
B. Personification
C. Litotes
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’

Question 5.
‘It is the engine of her family’
A. Metaphor
B. Personification
C. Metonymy
D. Oxymoron
Answer:
A. Metaphor

Question 6.
‘Showing her barred face identity mask’
A. Transferred Epithet
B. Metaphor
C. Litotes
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’

Reading Comprehension (Textual)
Read the following verses (stanzas) and answer the questions given below them:

Question 1.
A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen. Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup A suddenness, a startlement, at a branch end.
Questions:
1. What has happened to the tree?
2. How does the mood change on the arrival of the goldfinch?
Answer:
1. It is the month of September. The autumn has set in. The leaves of the tree have turned yellow and its seeds have also fallen.
2. The tree which was earlier silent has become active, noisy and full of life, as the goldfinch has come to feed her young ones.

Question 2.
Then with eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings, She launches away, towards the infinite And the laburnum subsides to empty.
Questions:
1. Who has been described in the first line?
2. What impression is created by the description?
Answer:
1. The goldfinch has been described in the first line.
2. The chirruping of the birds is delicate, soft and gentle like whispering. The reference is to the sounds that the bird makes.

Question 3.
Then sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt. She enters the thickness, and a machine starts up Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings The whole tree trembles and thrills.
Questions:
1. Who is ‘She’ in the second line? Where does she enter?
2. What is the ‘machine’ referred to inline two?
Answer:
1. ‘She’ is the goldfinch and she enters the thickness of the trees.
2. The ‘machine’ refers to the young ones of the goldfinch. They suddenly start twittering and chirruping as their mother comes to the nest to feed them.

Question 4.
The Laburnum top is silent, quite still. In the afternoon yellow September sunlight, A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen.
Questions:
1. Describe the laburnum tree.
2. What is the mood in these lines?
Answer:
1. The tree is silent and still. It has leaves that are yellowing and seeds have fallen.
2. The mood is of peace, calm, quiet and silence. There is absolute stillness and peace.

Question 5.
It is the engine of her family. She strokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end Showing her barred face identity mask
Questions:
1. Why has the word ‘engine’ been used to describe her family?
2. Who is ‘she’? How does she stroke the engine?
Answer:
1. The word ‘engine’ has been used to described her family. The engine of the machine starts up and there is noise, movement and energy signifying the excitement at the arrival of mother.
2. ‘She’ is the goldfinch who has her nest on the top of the laburnum tree. Just as the stoker feeds coal to the engine, the bird feeds her young ones.

The Laburnum Top Summary in English

The Laburnum Top Introduction:
Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 -28 October 1998) was an English poet and children’s writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. in 2008 The Times, ranked Hughes fourth on their list of ‘The 50 greatest British Writers’ since 1945.

The Laburnum Top Summary:
‘The Laburnum Top’ is a very powerful poem in which the laburnum symbolizes the hardships in life. The poem describes the laburnum tree whose seeds have not only fallen but also the leaves have turned yellow. It is an afternoon in September and the treetop is silent until a goldfinch appears. As soon as the goldfinch appears, there is a sudden strong tremor in the tree; there are noises of twitching of wings and chirping in bird language.

The whole tree trembles. The engine of the bird’s family has appeared that is the mother goldfinch has brought food for her babies. The movement of the goldfinch is like a lizard, sleek and smooth. She is the engine of her family, which means she is working to provide nutrition to the family just like the engine is the major part of a machine. In the end, the goldfinch again launches herself in the sky in a mysterious way and the laburnum is reduced to silence and emptiness again.