Samacheer Kalvi 9th English Poetry Exercise Solutions

The poem explores how suppressed anger grows into hatred. When the poet was angry with a friend, he expressed it → the anger ended. When angry with a foe, he suppressed it, watered it with fears and fake smiles → it grew into a poisonous tree that eventually destroyed his enemy. Theme: Unexpressed negative emotions grow and become destructive. Honesty and expression resolve conflict; repression poisons.

The apple (the fruit of the poison tree) represents hatred that has ripened into something that can destroy. The enemy sees it, is attracted to it (deceived by the speaker's outward smiles), steals it, and is destroyed. It echoes the biblical apple of the Garden of Eden — forbidden fruit, temptation, and destruction.

Stanza 1:

→ Honesty and communication dissolved the anger.

→ Silence and suppression caused the anger to grow.

• "I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end."
• "I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow."

The moral: Speak your anger honestly; don't bottle it up.

• Extended metaphor: Anger = a tree grown from a seed of suppressed feeling.
• Symbolism: Apple = ripened hatred; sun = false smiles (nourishing hatred while hiding it); water = tears/fears.
• Personification: The anger is nurtured like a living plant.
• Irony: The speaker smiles to his enemy even as he nurses his hatred.

A simple jab with a knife or axe is not enough — the tree heals:

• The wound closes over; new bark forms.
• Leaves sprout from the cut — the tree regenerates.
• The tree has grown for years, drawing nourishment from the earth. A surface wound does not touch its deep roots.

The root must be exposed — pulled out of the earth entirely. Once the root (the "white and wet / the strength of the tree exposed") is dug out and left in open air and sunlight, it withers, hardens, dries, and twists. Only then is the tree killed. "Then the tree is / no more a tree."

The poem is an environmental protest poem. Killing a tree requires sustained, deliberate effort — it is not accidental. This suggests that environmental destruction is wilful and determined. The poem may also be read as a metaphor for destroying something deeply rooted — a culture, a community, a person's spirit. You cannot kill resilience with a surface blow.

Detached and clinical — the poet describes the killing of a tree as a matter-of-fact process, step by step. This clinical tone makes the violence of the act more disturbing, not less. The reader feels the irony: such calm description of something so destructive.

The river begins as a small, happy, playful stream in the hills — leaping, bubbling, singing. As it moves through fields and valleys, it grows broader and calmer. By the time it reaches the sea, it is wide, deep, and quiet. The river's journey mirrors a human life: childhood (playful), adulthood (productive, nourishing fields), old age (broad, quiet, merging with something greater).

The river symbolises the journey of human life — from birth (the mountain spring) to death (merging with the ocean). Each stage of the river corresponds to a stage of human life. The sea represents death or eternity — the river loses its individual identity but becomes part of something vast.

• Extended metaphor: River = human life.
• Personification: The river is given human qualities (singing, leaping, weeping).
• Imagery: Visual and auditory images of flowing water.
• Alliteration: "babbling brook" type sounds.

"Old Man River" refers to the Mississippi River, personified as an ancient, enduring force. The song (from the musical Showboat) is sung from the perspective of African American workers on the river. The river just "keeps rolling along" — indifferent to human suffering, enduring through generations while people struggle and die.

The Mississippi symbolises eternal endurance and indifference to human suffering. African American labourers suffered — worked hard, faced oppression, grew tired and died — while the river rolled on unchanged. The river becomes a symbol of eternity vs. the brevity and hardship of human life.

A snowy evening; the speaker stops his horse on the road to watch snow falling in dark woods. The woods belong to someone in the village. It is "the darkest evening of the year." The world is quiet, still, and beautiful.

He is tempted to stay and watch the beautiful snow-filled woods — they represent peace, escape, perhaps even death (the "lovely, dark and deep" woods). But he has "promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep." Duty calls him back — responsibilities must be met before rest.

The poem is often read as a meditation on duty versus desire. The beautiful, silent woods tempt the speaker to linger — to escape from the demands of life. But he has obligations. The repeated last lines ("And miles to go before I sleep") suggest life's duties must be fulfilled before one can rest (sleep = death, or simply rest). Theme: Beauty and rest are tempting, but duty must come first.

Literally: obligations, appointments, duties. Metaphorically: the responsibilities of life — to family, community, work, and oneself. Life's journey must be completed before one can stop.