A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal By William Wordsworth

1.Why does he not mourn at her death?

Ans He does not mourn over the death of her because he knows, she has entered the world of eternity. death is an eternal process from where nobody can come back to life ever again. The speaker thinks death is a beautiful relief from earthly troubles.

2.The poet had written the first stanza in which tense

Ans The first stanza of A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal is in the simple past tense while the second stanza is in the simple present.

3.“She seemed a thing that could not feel”.why the poet refers her beloved as a “thing”

Ans The speaker officially introduces a lady for the first time. ‘She seemed a thing’ means she is no more because we call ‘a thing’ to inanimate objects. Hence, ‘thing’ can be taken as the corpse of the woman who recently passed away.

4.why she has  “No motion has she now, no force”

Ans The poet  states that she can no longer move because she does not have any energy. Moreover, she has also lost the senses of hearing and seeing because probably his beloved, is dead.

5.Find the rhyme scheme of the poem.

Ans The rhyme scheme of this poem is abab cdcd which gives a musical sense to the poem.

6.What does “The touch of earthly years.”signify(mean)

Ans “The touch of earthly years.” In this context, ‘earthly years’ refers to the process of aging, and the deceased lady has stopped feeling this process.

7.What are the human fears?

Ans He argues that he had no ‘human fears’ which means the fear of death. The speaker is literally asleep in the first line because he begins the first line as the following “A slumber did my spirit seal.”

8.“Rolled around in earth’s diurnal course,/ With rocks, and stones, and trees”what does it signify

Ans  It means  she has been buried and has become a part of the earth. The speaker is not sad at all at the loss because he understands that she has become nature which lasts till eternity. Rocks, stones, and trees all are parts of nature and the dead lady has mixed into them now.

9. illustrate the underlying themes in the poem

Ans  According to our understanding, it carries the themes of death as a natural process, a celebration of eternity, romanticism, etc. Death is a part of a natural process Hence, the speaker does not mourn the death of his supposedly beloved.

Eternity is another important theme of the given poem. Like nature, death is an eternal process from where nobody can come back to life ever again. So, the speaker thinks that death is a beautiful relief from earthly troubles.

Romanticism is also a powerful theme .We get this idea only at the end of the poem where the speaker names some gifts of nature i.e. trees, rocks, and stones. He does not mourn over the death of ‘She’ because he knows, she has entered the world of eternity.

10.What does the word “diurnal”suggest?

Ans  Just as the girl’s lack of motion mirrors the speaker’s gentle ‘slumber’ in the first stanza, suggesting that death is but a peaceful sleep, so the world ‘diurnal’ implies that the girl is now back amongst the world of nature, and has become a part of something greater.

11.Which genre of poem is it?

Ans ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ is a fine lyric and an elegy that is haunting in its simplicity.

12.which word means the same as “earth’s daily rotation”?

Ans The world ‘diurnal’ implies same as “earth’s daily rotation”.

13.which literary device is used in the following lines

“She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.”

“Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course

With rocks and stones and trees.”

Ans Enjambment - when a sentence continues into two or more lines ending without any punctuation marks, it is called Enjambment.

14.What is the mood of the speaker?

Ans The mood of the speaker is elegic. He is lamenting his beloved’s death. He had taken life for granted and had never thought that one day death would take her away from him. When she was taken away, he could not bear the loss.

15.What has sealed the poets spirit?

Ans The poet admits that he was in a sort of a deep sleep because he did not fear the harsh reality of life. The sleep had sealed his consciousness.The poet’s soul had drifted into deep sleep as he did not have any realization of the truth.