1.

Read the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow:

The bonsai tree

in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning

(i) Which tree is the poet talking about? How tall would it have grown and in which
circumstances?
(ii) What does the bonsai tree symbolise? Explain.
(iii) Where would it have grown tall? How would have been its height its enemy?
(iv) Why do you think the poet used the words "attractive pot" in the extract?
(v) What does "till split by lightning' symbolise? How is the tree protected from
lightning?

2. ...carefully pruned it.

It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons.

(i)How tall is the tree? Why did it not grow any further?
(ii)Who prunes the tree? Why does he do so?
(iii)What does 'croons' mean? Briefly describe the symbolism used here.
(iv)What role do the short lines of the poem play?
(v)Identify the gardening vocabulary used in this extract. How do these aid in the artifice of
the bonsai?

3. It is your nature
to be small and cory,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in

(i) What is the nature of the tree according to the gardener?

(ii)is the tree lucky to grow in a pot? Explain the irony in this line.
(iii)What effect do these lines have on the tree? Explain.
(iv)Even though the tree had the potential to grow taller, it didn't. Why?
(v)If the tree was nurtured, it would've grown tall and reached a potential Comment.

4. With living creatures

one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth;
 the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you love to touch

(i)Why should one begin very early? What do you understand by 'dwarf'?
(ii)What is the significance of 'dwarf and 'crippled?
(iii)Briefly explain the meaning and significance of bound feet?
(iv) "The bound feet" and "the hair in curlers" indicates that the poet is to I talking about a tree.
Who/what is the poet talking about? Justify
(v) Explain the meaning and symbolism in "the hands you/love to touch".