Question 2 - The Road Not taken - Beehive - Poems (Literature) - English Class 9

Read the given extracts and answer the questions

Extract:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(The Road not taken)

Question (i)

 What does the word 'sigh' imply about the speaker's feelings in the first line?

• A) Satisfaction
• B) Relief
• C) Regret
• D) Boredom

Answer: 

Answer written by student:

C) Regret

Step-by-Step explanation: 📝

• To find the implication of a word in a poem, we can use context clues, connotations, tone or mood.
•  In this case, we can use context clues to figure out what 'sigh' implies. Context clues are words or phrases that give hints about the meaning or implication of an unknown word.
•  The context clue for 'sigh' is 'telling this'. This tells us that the word is related to something that the speaker is narrating or recalling from his past.
•  We can also use connotations or associations that a word evokes to guess what 'sigh' implies . Some connotations for 'sigh' are sadness, disappointment, longing or nostalgia.
•  We can also us e tone or mood to infer what 'sigh' implies. Tone or mood are the feelings or attitudes that the speaker or the poem expresses. The tone or mood of this poem is reflective, wistful and melancholic.
•  Using these strategies, we can eliminate options A, B and D as they do not match the context clue, the connotations or the tone of 'sigh'. The only option left is C) Regret, which means to feel sorry or unhappy about something that one has done or failed to do.

 Therefore, the word 'sigh' implies regret about the speaker's feelings in the first line of the poem.

Question (ii)

What does the phrase 'ages and ages hence' mean in the second line?

Answer: