s Worth is known as a great lover and preacher of nature.

HeSUMMARY

OF SOLITARY REAPER

The solitary is a delightful

lyric by William Wordsworth. Word
impresses us by the imaginative
and philosophical quality of his
thoughts.
This

poem

Solitary

Reaper is a result of his visit to

Scotland where he came across a
lovely maiden in the fields all alone. Her lovely person and her sweet song had a
deep impression on the poet and moved him to compose these verses. The lovely
singer appeared to be a part of that beautiful scene of nature.
A highland girl was reaping grain in the field and singing a song at the
same time. The poet did not understand the contents of the song as it was in a
foreign language. He guessed that it was the tale of old and tragic events of the
past. It would also be an account of some recent calamity or mishap. Whatever
the theme of the song it was sung in a beautiful rich voice. The song seemed to
be endless. The poet was bewitched by the thrilling notes of the lonely reaper.
The whole valley was ringing with her silver sound. Even the spring bird Cuckoo
could not produce such a magical effect as the maidens song cost on the poet.
The poet stood still and listened to that golden voice for some time. After
wards when he was climbing the hill he could not hear that song any longer. But
he was still feeling the sweet vibrations of the music in his heart. The sweet
memory of that song had become a permanent source of joy.

***

SUMMARY OF SEVEN AGES

The poem The Seven Ages commences with
life being compared to a huge stage, where all of us
are only actors. Each person has an entry into the
world at birth and exists it at death.
According to Shakespeare every man plays
several parts during his life time. On the stage of life
every man has seven acts. The first act of man is
infancy. At this time all that the baby does is cry and
puke on his nurses lap. After he goes through his
infant, he emerges as a school child who slings his bag over his shoulder and
creeps most unwillingly to school.
At the next stage in life, the young man is a lover, who is busy composing
ballads for his beloved and sighing deeply for her attention. He graduates into a
bearded soldier, who promises solemnly to guard his country. He is filled with
national pride, is quick to be insulted and is always ready to spring up in defence.
At this point of time he is more concerned with status and reputation. From the
agile soldier, he goes on to become a judge whose waistline grows as he
becomes fatter and fatter. He wears a short, formal beard and his eyes become
intense. He is full of wisdom, speaking to everyone in a just and wise manner.
After he has played this part, he goes in to the sixth age. He becomes thin,
wears spectacles, the skin around him hangs loosely. He is made fun of as being
a funny old man. His youth has been left behind. His clothes hand loosely around
him and his once manly voice turns into a high pitched, childish one. With this,
man enters the last act where he experiences his second childhood as he
becomes dependent on people once more. He is overcome by senility and
forgetfulness as he loses his faculties of sight, hearing, smell and taste, slowly but
surely and ultimately passes away.

SUMMARY
THE SOLITARY REAPER
The

poem

The

Solitary

Reapers is a literary representation of

striking experience by the natures
poet

William

Wordsworth.

Once

passing by a field he happens to listen

an enchanting music coming from the
melodious voice of a Scottish reaper
who was singing while reaping the crops all alone in the field. The girl sings a sad
song and the song were so melodious that the poet stood there spell bound. He is
so much overwhelmed that he feels the entire valley is over flowing with the
marvelous voice of the reaper. The poet is so fascinated by the sweet song of the
solitary reaper that he thinks the song of the reaper is more enchanting than that
of a nightingale and more thrilling than that of a cuckoo. As the strain was being
sung in a dialect the poet was unable to understand the theme of the song. Then
he tries to guess that the theme might be about some tragic event of the past or
day to day sorrows of the present. He says it hardly matters what she sings. What
is of significance is that her song seems to be never ending.

Being touched and emotional he narrates the solitary reaper who cuts the
grain with a sickle and sings. He then carries in his heart the echoes of the song
which haunt him for long.

***

SUMMARY
THE SEVEN AGES
The Seven Ages of Man is taken
from William Shakespeares famous play,
As You Like It (Act-II, Scene-VII),
describes the seven phases in a mans lifefrom childhood to old age. The world is but
a global stage and all men and women
presented here are mere puppets in the
hands of destiny. Just like the infrastructures
of a stage, the world has its own entrances
and exits. Every man in his full lifetime has
many parts to play. His total number of acts
in his lifetime is the seven ages.
The first and foremost act of
every human being is the stage of infancy, where he makes his presence
felt by crying at the top of his voice and many a times vomiting any food
or drink that is repulsive, at the nursing arms of his mother. This period
normally last till four years of age. The second stage is the whining
schoolboy where he learns to utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted
sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint. His shiny morning face
and his satchel; a small bag, sometimes with a shoulder strap; he creeps
like
a
snail
and
not
willing
to
go
to
school.
The third stage is his early youth, the peak of love and high
romance. He sighs like a burning furnace and sings the sad ballads of
romance; full of woe; affected with, characterized by, or indicating woe:
woeful melodies; to impress his lovers heart. The impression of her reply
can be seen in her eyebrows. The fourth stage is that of a soldier where
life if full of obligations, commitments, compliances, oaths and
vows. His beard is like a leopard or panther. He endlessly fights for his
honor, a full presence of mind which is sudden and quick in quarrel and a
heart
to
maintain
a
dignified
reputation.
The fifth stage is the adult-hood where a man tries to live a fair and
justified life. His belly becomes bigger than normal. He is conscious
about his diet and consumes a good intake of capon; a cockerel
castrated to improve the flesh for use as food. His eyes are severe with
seriousness and his beard is leveled to a formal cut. He is to take a lot of
correct decisions to keep up with the ever changing times. So this stage is
the most powerful stage in life.

The poem The Seven Ages is an extract

from the great dramatist William Shakespeares
drama as you like it. Here Shakespeare
compares the whole world with a stage and all
the humans as actors and actresses. As actors
and actresses come on the stage, play their roles
and then quit the stage, similarly men and
women are born, act different roles in life and
then die and leave this world. Shakespeare
divides human life into seven stages. The first
stage in mans life is infancy. The infant cries and vomits in his nurses arm. The
next stage is that of school going child hood. The school boy has a shining face,
with a school bag and he walks slowly and unwillingly to school. In the third stage,
the boy grows in to a lover. He writes poem in praise of his beloved and sighs like
a furnace. The next role he plays is that of a soldier. As a soldier he is rash and
reactive, seeking short lived reputation at the risk of his life. He is ready to die for
honour. He is short tempered and sports a beard like that of a leopard. The next
role is that of a justice. He is well fed and prosperous. He is fat and fierce eyed,
full of wise maxims and impresses others with his wisdom. The next stage is that
of an old man wearing slippers and spectacles with wrinkled skin, shrunk body
and shrilling voice. And finally comes the stage of senility or second childishness.
He loses his memory, teeth, eyes, sense of taste and in reality everything. Thus
ends the strange drama of mans eventful life.

***

Biography of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon,

England. He was born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, a glover/leather
merchant and local land heiress, respectively.
Shakespeare's father owned many houses in Stra tford around the time of
Shakespeare's birth, so the exact location of his birth cannot be known for sure
(Mabillard 7). William allegedly attended the free grammar school in Stratford,
where he attained the majority of his sparse education. While "Latin was the
primary language of learning", Shakespeare undoubtedly received "some lessons in
English" (Mabillard 16). Latin authors and composition would have been the bulk of
Shakespeare's literary training, however, and it is obvious that he "absorbed much
that was taught in his grammar school, for he had an impressive familiarity with the
stories by Latin authors, as is evident when examining his plays and their sources"
(Mabillard 16). He married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer's daughter, on
November 28, 1582, and six months later their first daughter, Susanna, was born.
Anne later gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith, although Hamnet died in
childhood at the age of 11 (Fields 26). Information about Shakespeare during his first
seven years of fatherhood is nonexistent, a period known as the "Lost Years." There
are many speculations as to why this is, such as that he had to leave after being
caught poaching a neighbor's animals, or that he was working as an assistant
schoolmaster in Lancashire, England ("Shakespeare's Bio" 1; Miller 37).
Around 1588 Shakespeare reappears in London, England and started to become a
notable actor and playwright. He worked for "Pembroke's Men, as well as numerous
others, in particular Strange's Men, which later became the Chamberlain's Men, with
whom he remained for the rest of his career" (Miller 74). During his career
Shakespeare completed 37 known plays, of which 36 were compiled and published by
two of his close friends soon after Shakespeare death. These friends, John Heminges
and Henry Condell, said they published the plays "only to keep the memory of so

worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare" (qtd. in Miller 86-87).
Shakespeare also wrote some book-length narrative poetry in 1592-1594, when the
Black Plague closed London theaters down. The most memorable of these writings
"Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" (Fields 56). It is through the
dedication of these longer works to Earl of Southampton that causes many scholars
to believe that the Earl must have not only been Shakespeare's friend but also his
benefactor, although there is no written proof of this claim (Miller 82). Shakespeare
also composed many sonnets during this two year period, which "were published
without his consent in 1609" (Miller 82).
Shakespeare did not explode on the London scene without criticism. One of the most
notable of his critics was "Robert Greene, a London playwright" ("Shakespeare's Bio"
1) who in 1592 wrote that Shakespeare was "...an upstart crow, beautified with our
feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well
to bombast our a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johnnes fac
totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country" ("Shakespeare's Bio"
1-2). Despite the criticism (or some believe jealousy) he received in London,
Shakespeare prospered into not only a famous playwright, but also an owner of
substantial property and partner of the theatrical company The Globe, which was
"the most successful [company] in London in his day" ("Shakespeare's Bio" 2). His
success allowed him to purchase a comfortable home and retire in Stratford-UponAvon in 1611.
Shakespeare wrote his Last Will and Testament in 1611, leaving the vast majority of
his numerous assets to his daughter Susanna. In "Shakespeare's Last Will &
Testament" Shakespeare leaves Susanna "all my barnes, stables, Orchardes,
gardens, landes, tenements and herediaments ...within the townes and Hamletts,
villages, ffieldes and groundes of Stratford upon Avon, Oldstratford, Bushopton and
Welcombe or in anie of them in the saied countie of warr" (2). It is said that
Shakespeare only left his daughter Judith 300, mainly due to the fact that "Judith's
new husband, Thomas Quiney, ...ran afoul of church doctrine and public esteem
before and after the marriage" (qtd. in Miller 1). In his will he states "and the stock
not to be paied unto her soe long as she shalbe marryed" ("Last Will" 1). To his wife
Anne, Shakespeare left "my second best bed with the furniture" ("Last Will" 2). He
also left things to nieces and nephews, his sister Johane Hart, some close friends, and
Susanna's husband John Hall ("Last Will" 1-3).
Shakespeare allegedly died on his birthday in 1616, although some references say
1619 (Miller 164; Mabillard 42). On April 25, 1616 (or 1619), Shakespeare "was
buried...in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church where he had been baptized exactly 52
[or 55] years earlier"

Biography of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, to

John and Anne (Cookson) Wordsworth, the second of their five children. His father
was law agent and rent collector for Lord Lonsdale, and the family was fairly well off.
After his mother's death in 1778 he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, near
Windermere; in 1787 he went up to St. John's College, Cambridge. He enjoyed hiking:
during the "long" (i.e., summer) vacation of 1788 he tramped around Cumberland
county; two years later went on a walking tour of France, Switzerland, and Germany;
and in 1791, after graduation, trekked through Wales.
His enthusiasm for the French Revolution took him to France again in 1791,
where he had an affair with Annette Vallon, who bore him an illegitimate daughter,
Caroline, in 1792. Having run out of money, Wordsworth returned to England the
following year, and the Anglo-French war, following the Reign of Terror, prevented
his return for nine years.
In 1794 he was reunited with his sister Dorothy, who became his companion,
close friend, moral support, and housekeeper until her physical and mental decline in
the 1830s. The next year he met Coleridge, and the three of them grew very close, the
two men meeting daily in 1797-98 to talk about poetry and to plan Lyrical Ballads,
which came out in 1798. The three friends travelled to Germany that fall, a trip that
produced intellectual stimulation for Coleridge and homesickness for Wordsworth.
After their return, William and Dorothy settled in his beloved Lake district, near
Grasmere.

The Peace of Amiens in 1802 allowed Wordsworth and his sister to visit France
again to see Annette and Caroline. They arrived at a mutually agreeable settlement,
and a few months later, after receiving an inheritance owed by Lord Lonsdale since
John Wordsworth's death in 1783, William married Mary Hutchinson. By 1810 they
had five children, but their happiness was tempered by the loss at sea of William's
brother John (1805), the alienation from Coleridge in 1810, and the death of two
children in 1812. In 1813 Wordsworth received an appointment as Distributor of
Stamps for Westmorland, and the 400 per year which went with this post made him
financially secure. The whole family, which included Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount,
between Grasmere and Rydal Water).
Wordsworth's literary career began with Descriptive Sketches (1793) and
reached an early climax before the turn of the century, with Lyrical Ballads. His
powers peaked with Poems in Two Volumes (1807), and his reputation continued to
grow; even his harshest reviewers recognized his popularity and the originality.
The important later works were well under way. His success with shorter forms
made him the more eager to succeed with longer, specifically with a long, three-part
"philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, . . having for its
principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement." The
17,000 lines which were eventually published made up only a part of this mammoth
project. The second section, The Excursion, was completed (pub. 1814), as was the
first book of the first part, The Recluse. During his lifetime he refused to print The
Prelude, which he had completed by 1805, because he thought it was unprecedented
for a poet to talk as much about himself unless he could put it in its proper setting,
which was as an introduction to the complete three-part Recluse.
Inspiration gradually failed him for this project, and he spent much of his later
life revising The Prelude. Critics quarrel about which version is better, the 1805 or the
1850, but agree that in either case it is the most successful blank verse epic
since Paradise Lost.
Finally fully reconciled to Coleridge, the two of them toured the Rhineland in
1828. Durham University granted him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in
1838, and Oxford conferred the same honor the next year. When Robert Southey died
in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He died in 1850, and his wife
published the much-revised Prelude that summer.

****

Biography of R.K. Narayan

Nearly 70 years ago, India's greatest living writer in English, took out a brand
new exercise book and wrote in it: "It was Monday morning."
With those four words, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan (just R.K. Narayan to
most) took off on a journey to that oddly populated fictional continent called
Malgudi, with the young boy Swami and his eclectic mix of friends.
"The very first line I wrote was 'It was Monday morning.' And then I had an idea
of a railway station, a very small railway station, a wayside station. You've seen
the kind of thing, with a platform and trees and a stationmaster.
The railway station to which Swami goes to watch trains arrive and depart: that
was the original idea with which I started 'Swami and Friends'.
But in the actual book it comes last, it comes at the end of the story," wrote
Narayan much later, remembering his first work. The writer turned 94 on Oct 6,
2000.
Despite the overwhelming success of his semi-autobiographical, self-mocking
vignettes of small-town childhood in 'Swami and Friends', Narayan very nearly
missed the call to fame and recognition.
"Deluged under rejection slips", it was only the fortuitous arrival of his
manuscript on well-known writer, Graham Greene's desk, which made his entry
into the "real world" possible.

Having read the manuscript, Graham Greene recommended it to publisher

Hamish Hamilton who promptly agreed to publish it. Some seven decades later,
Malgudi occupies an almost real space on the Indian map.
Seventeen novels and 300 short stories later, Narayan, continues to be one of
India's most prolific and most stylish writers in the English language. Some of his
best known works are 'The Bachelor of Arts', 'The Dark Room', 'The English
Teacher', 'Mr Sampath', 'The Financial Expert', 'Waiting for the Mahatma', 'The
Guide', 'The Man-eater of Malgudi', 'The Talkative Men' and 'Malgudi Days'.
But writing was not a profession to be entertained for a young man straight out
of college. After graduation, Narayan worked as a teacher in a high school and
as a journalist for a few years.
Yet, teaching proved to be an unsatisfying experience after which writing
'Swami and Friends' became part of a businesslike routine that the writer
pursued with a serious face.
In India, Narayan's books crowd the syllabuses of schools and colleges as novel
after novel becomes 'required reading', though one of the most respected Indian
literary awards, the Jnanpith award, has eluded him for an ironical reason. It is
given to a writer in Indian languages and Narayan has chosen to write in English.
The writer won his first major Indian award when he won the Yatra Award, given
every year for outstanding achievement by a writer from South Asia, in 1994.
The citation said, "Mr. Narayan has created with quiet honesty and moral
seriousness, a unique fictional world out of the ordinary and daily lives of people
in the small towns of the South. He is a master story-teller whose language is
simple and unpretentious, whose wit is critical yet healing, whose characters
are drawn with sharp precision and subtle irony and whose narratives have the
lightness of touch which only the craftsman of the highest order can risk"
The 1994 award is a long way from the first prize that Narayan won in 1930, in a
short story competition organised by a magazine. When the editor asked him
about his future plans, Narayan seems to have replied, "I hope to write till my
fingers fall off." Happily, 70 years later, neither have Narayan's fingers fallen
off, nor have ours grown tired of thumbing through his absurd caricatures and
grotesqueries.

SAROJI NAIDU
Saroji Naidu also known by
the sobriquet The Nightingale of India
was

child

prodigy,

Indian

independence activist and poet. Naidu

was the first Indian woman to become
the President of the Indian National
Congress and the first woman to
become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh
state was a great patriot, politician, orator and administrator of all the famous
women of India, Mrs. Sarojinidevi Naidu's name is at the top. Not only that, but
she was truly one of the jewels of the world. Being one of the most famous
heroines of the 20th century, her birthday is celebrated as "Women's Day"
Early Life
She was born in Hyderabad. Sarojini Chattopadhyay, later Naidu
belonged to a Bengali family of Kulin Brahmins. But her father, Agorenath
Chattopadhyay, after receiving a doctor of science degree from Edinburgh
University, settled in Hyderabad State, where he founded and administered the
Hyderabad College, which later became the Nizam's College in Hyderabad.
Sarojini Naidu's mother Barada Sundari Devi was a poetess baji and used to
write poetry in Bengali. Sarojini Naidu was the eldest among the eight siblings.
One of her brothers Birendranath was a revolutionary and her other brother
Harindranath was a poet, dramatist, and actor.
Sarojini Naidu was a brilliant student. She was proficient in Urdu,
Telugu, English, Bengali, and Persian. At the age of twelve, Sarojini Naidu
attained national fame when she topped the matriculation examination at
Madras University. Her father wanted her to become a mathematician or
scientist but Sarojini Naidu was interested in poetry. Once she was working on

an algebra problem, and when she couldn't find the solution she decided to take a
break, and in the same book she wrote her first inspired poetry. She got so
enthused by this that she wrote "The Lady of the Lake", a poem 1300 lines long.
When her father saw that she was more interested in poetry than mathematics or
science, he decided to encourage her. With her father's support, she wrote the play
"Maher Muneer" in the Persian language. Dr. Chattopadhyaya distributed some
copies among his friends and sent one copy to the Nawab of Hyderabad. Reading
a beautiful play written by a young girl, the Nizam was very impressed. The
college gave her a scholarship to study abroad. At the age of 16 she got admitted
to King's College of England.
England
At the age of 16, she traveled to England to study first at King's College London
and later at Girton College, Cambridge. There she met famous laureates of her
time such as Arthur Symons and Edmond Gosse. It was Gosse who convinced
Sarojini to stick to Indian themes-India's great mountains, rivers, temples, social
milieu, to express her poetry. She depicted contemporary Indian life and events.
Her collections "The golden threshold (1905)", "The bird of time (1912)", and "The
broken wing (1912)" attracted huge Indian and English readership.
Works
Her major contribution was also in the field of poetry. Her poetry had
beautiful words that could also be sung. Soon she got recognition as the "Bul
Bule Hind" when her collection of poems was published in 1905 under the title
Golden Threshold. After that, she published two other collections of poems--The
Bird of Time and The Broken Wings. In 1918, Feast of Youth was published.
Later, The Magic Tree, The Wizard Mask and A Treasury of Poems were
published. Mahashree Arvind, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru were
among the thousands of admirers of her work. Her poems had English words, but
an Indian soul.
eee