Important Questions Poem 5 English Poems Class 10 CBSE Board

The Trees

Question 1: Who is the author of the poem “The Trees”?
Answer: Adrienne Rich.

Question 2: Where and when was Adrienne Rich born?
Answer: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. in 1929.

Question 3: Find, in the first stanza, three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest.
Answer: No bird could sit, no insect hide, no sun bury its feet in shadow.

Question 4: Where are the trees in the poem?
Answer: The trees are inside the house.

Question 5: What do the roots, leaves, and twigs of the trees do in the poem?
Answer: The roots work to disengage themselves from the cracks in the veranda floor, the leaves strain toward the glass, and small twigs stiff with exertion.

Question 6: What does the poet compare the long-cramped boughs to?
Answer: Like newly discharged patients half-dazed, moving to the clinic doors.

Question 7: How does the poet describe the moon at the beginning of the third stanza?
Answer: The whole moon shines in a sky still open.

Question 8: How does the moon change by the end of the poem, and what causes this change?
Answer: The moon is broken like a mirror, its pieces flash now in the crown of the tallest oak; this change is caused by the trees stumbling forward into the night and winds rushing to meet them.

Question 9: What happens to the house when the trees move out of it?
Answer: The glass is breaking, the head is full of whispers which tomorrow will be silent, and the smell of leaves and lichen still reaches like a voice into the rooms.

Question 10: Why do you think the poet does not mention “the departure of the forest from the house” in her letters?
Answer: Could it be that we are often silent about important happenings that are so unexpected that they embarrass us.