THE VOICE OF THE RAIN

CLASS-XI(ENGLISH)

THE VOICE OF THE RAIN

1. What question does the poet put to the rain and how does he feel when he gets the answer?

Ans:     The poet watches the falling showers of the rain. The showers are falling very lightly producing a soft music. The poet is fascinated and asks who she is. Strangely enough, the rain herself answers the question posed to her. The poet feels really surprised to get an answer and translates the answer into his own language.

2. What answer does the rain give to the poet regarding herself and her origin?

Ans:     The rain, quite strangely, answers the question posed to her. She replies that she is the song or poem of the earth. She rises eternally day and night from the land and the bottomless sea into the sky. In the sky, vaguely, the vapours cool down and take the shape of showers and the rain.

3. What happens when the rain descends in the form of showers?

Ans:     The rain proves a blessing for the earth. When the showers of rain fall down on earth, they wash away all the droughts, dust and other impurities of the earth. The seeds lying hidden in the earth suddenly sprout to life when it rains. So the rain gives a new lease of life to the earth.

4. Describe the never ending cycle of the rain.

Ans:     The rain goes on completing a fixed cycle day in and day out. She rises in the form of water vapours out of the land and the bottomless sea. She rises towards the sky where when she cools down she takes the shape of showers. The showers fall back to the place of its origin.

5. How does the rain become the voice of the earth?

Ans:     Walt Whitman calls the showers of rain as ‘the poem of the earth’. Rainy season gives a new lease of life to the scorched and parched earth. The rain makes the seeds sprout in the form of saplings. Rain makes the earth pure and beautifies it. Actually it is the voice or the song of the earth. The earth finds its expression only through the showers of the rain.

6. Justify the title “The Voice of the Rain’.

Ans:     The title of the poem is appropriate, just and logical. The cycle of rain is a natural phenomenon. Actually, the rain rises out of the earth and the bottomless sea in the form of water vapours. In the sky they take the shape of the rain. The light and soft musing of the falling rain is actually the song of the earth itself. After wandering from the earth to the sky, it comes back to the  place of its origin, the earth.