Class 7 English Chapter 14: My Dear Soldiers

Fifteen lines, and a reader inside them

The poem is short, and almost every line in it is about the same subject. So it can be read four times over without a reader being able to say what it does. That is worth admitting at the start, because the difficulty is real and it is not a difficulty of vocabulary. What the poem does is put you on one side of a contrast and then keep you there.

Who is being spoken to

The first line addresses the defenders of the borders, and the second calls them the great sons of the poet’s land. Nobody is named. No regiment, no border and no war is named either, and the poem is stronger for it, because everything it goes on to say then applies to every soldier at once.

Why the book adds a note

Because the line says sons, and the poem means soldiers. The note beside it says that the phrase covers the men and the women both. A reader needs telling, and a book that prints the note is doing its job rather than hoping the difficulty will not be noticed.

Now the contrast

While we are all asleep, they are still holding to their duty. Two pronouns, one line apart, and the whole poem turns on them. Everything that follows is a way of widening the gap between the two.

What that does to a reader

It puts you on the sleeping side. The poem is not describing two groups of strangers to a third party; it is telling you where you were last night while somebody else was awake on a ridge. That is why it is uncomfortable to read slowly, and why it would lose almost everything if the pronouns were changed to people and soldiers.

Three weathers

A windy season, snowy days, and the sweltering rays of a scorching sun. Three conditions, as different from one another as the poem can make them, and in each of the three the same sentence is true: they are there, awake, and guarding all the time.

The constancy is the point

A poem that simply said the soldiers are always on duty would be making a statement, and a reader could agree with it and forget it. This one changes the weather three times over and keeps the duty exactly the same, which is a demonstration instead. The variation is in the world; the constancy is in them.

Like yogis

Here is the poem’s one simile. They tread the lonely expanses as yogis do, which compares a way of living rather than a faith: apart from other people, in places nobody else is, and without comfort, by choice. The word lonely is doing as much work as the comparison. Company is one of the ordinary things the job removes.

Six places, in three pairs

Climbing heights or striding valleys. Defending deserts or guarding marshes. Surveillance in the seas, and securing the air. Six places in three lines, and the arrangement is not an accident.

Why they are pairs of opposites

High and low. Dry and wet. Water and sky. Each pair takes in both ends of something, so between the three of them there is no kind of ground, no body of water and no height left over. By the end of three lines there is nowhere that the soldiers are not, and the poem has covered a whole country without drawing a map or naming a single state.

And one detail of grammar worth noticing

Every one of those places arrives with its own verb: climbing, striding, defending, guarding, securing. The soldiers are never simply present somewhere. They are always doing something, and a reader who replaced the five verbs with the single word in would be able to see at once how much the lines lose.

What the service costs

The prime of your youth, and the nation is what receives it. Not a life, in that line, but the best years of one. It is a harder thing to picture than a death, and a stranger thing to give, because nothing visible marks it and it happens slowly.

Then the wind chimes

The wind chimes of the poet’s land are said to vibrate the soldiers' feat. It is the one metaphor in the poem, and it makes the country itself into the thing that keeps sounding what they did. Nobody claims that chimes really ring for a soldier. The figure puts the remembering outside the people who do it.

The last two lines

The poem stops describing. The fourteenth line prays for the brave men, and the fifteenth asks the Lord to bless them all. A poem that had been about what soldiers do ends as something said on their behalf, and the exclamation marks are the poet’s own.

Why that ending matters

Because it changes what the reader is doing. For thirteen lines you are being told something about other people. In the last two you are joining in, since the we that prays is the same we that was asleep in line three. The poem closes the gap it spent itself opening.

The theme

Patriotism and sacrifice, which is the first of the four choices the book offers. Not heroism and awareness, and not seasons and terrains, although the poem certainly has weather and ground in it. The weather and the ground are the material; they are not what the poem is about.

And the tone

Admiring, respectful, grateful and prayerful, all four at once. Sad is the one word to reject. Nothing in the fifteen lines mourns anybody, no loss is reported, and the last line asks a blessing rather than making a lament. If you choose a tone word, be ready to name the line that carries it.

Scenario:

Three pupils summarise the poem in four sentences each. Aanya writes about the weather and the places: wind, snow, sun, heights, valleys, deserts, marshes, seas, air. Bhuvan writes that the soldiers are brave and selfless and that we should respect them, four times over in different words. Chetan writes that the poem sets we against you. He adds that the weathers change while the duty does not, and that the six places come in opposite pairs so nothing is left out. His last sentence says that the poem turns into a prayer. Their teacher says that two of the three could have been written without reading the poem at all.

Analysis:

Aanya and Bhuvan, and for opposite reasons. Aanya has read the poem closely enough to copy its nouns, and her summary is a list: anybody with the page open could assemble it, and nothing in it says what the poem does with its weather and its places. Bhuvan has not touched the poem at all. Brave, selfless and worthy of respect would fit any poem about soldiers ever written, and four sentences of it is still one sentence. Chetan does the thing a summary is for. He names the structure - two pronouns, a constant against three variables, three pairs of opposites, a turn at the end - and every one of those claims can be checked against the fifteen lines. Notice that he quotes almost nothing. A summary that works is a description of the machinery, and the machinery is exactly what a list of nouns leaves out.

Activity:

Summarise any poem you know in four sentences, with no adjective of praise in any of them. Then check that every sentence could be argued from the text.

Title:

Mark the pronouns, then the places

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The we appears twice and the you many times, and the two we lines are the first and the last. The poem begins and ends with the reader, and gives everything in between to the soldiers.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was a scientist and the eleventh President of India, and he wrote poetry throughout his life.

A yogi in this poem is somebody who lives apart and goes without comfort by choice, which is why the comparison is to a way of living rather than to a faith.

Surveillance means watching over something closely, and in the poem it is the navy’s word: surveillance in seas.

The poem’s shape — Address, contrast, weathers, places, cost, prayer — Six movements in fifteen lines: who is spoken to, we against you, three weathers, six places, the prime of youth, and then the blessing.

The six places — High and low, dry and wet, sea and sky — Heights and valleys, deserts and marshes, the seas and the air. Three pairs of opposites, which is how the poem covers everywhere.

Five devices, and what each is for

The book asks a pupil to find imagery, a simile, a metaphor, repetition and alliteration in this poem. All five are there. Finding them is the easy half.

Why naming is not enough

A pupil who writes that the poem contains a metaphor has told a reader nothing. The question worth answering is what the figure does that a plain sentence would not do, and the answer is different for each of the five. A device is a choice the poet made, and a choice can always be undone on paper to see what it was for.

Imagery first

Imagery is a picture made with words. A windy season. Snowy days. The sweltering rays of a scorching sun. Lonely expanses, climbed heights, striding through valleys.

What this poem’s imagery is made of

Two materials only: weather and ground. There are no faces in the poem, no uniforms, no weapons and no buildings. A reader sees conditions rather than people, which is exactly the right way round for a poem about duty. Put one face into it and the poem would be about that soldier instead of about all of them.

The simile

The soldiers tread the lonely expanses as yogis. That is the one simile in the poem, and the word as is what makes it one.

What the simile does

It turns hardship into something chosen. A yogi is not somebody things happen to; a yogi has decided to live apart and without comfort. Compare the soldiers to yogis and the loneliness stops being bad luck and becomes a discipline. Try the line with any other comparison and you will see how much rests on that one word. Sentries, hermits, watchmen: each would say something different, and only the yogi carries the idea of a hardship taken up on purpose.

And what it does not do

It says nothing about belief. A pupil who writes that the soldiers are religious has read a comparison of ways of living as a comparison of faiths.

The metaphor

The wind chimes of the land are said to vibrate the soldiers' feat. No word such as like or as appears, and that absence is what makes this a metaphor rather than a simile.

What the metaphor does

It moves the remembering outside the people who do it. The poet could have written that the country is grateful. Instead he makes the chimes of the land sound the deed, so the remembering belongs to the place and goes on whether anybody is thinking about it or not.

How to tell the two apart, in one step

Look for as or like. If the comparison announces itself with one of those words it is a simile; if it simply puts one thing in place of another it is a metaphor. Nothing else is needed.

Repetition

The word you runs through the whole poem: you are great, you still hold, you are there, your youth. The word we appears twice, and only twice.

What the repetition keeps open

The gap. Almost everything in the poem belongs to the soldiers, and the reader gets two lines: one in which we are asleep and one in which we pray. The imbalance is not carelessness. It is the shape of the argument.

Alliteration

Season and snowy. Sun’s and sweltering. Two places where neighbouring words start with the same sound, both of them in the lines about hard weather. It is the one device in the poem that cannot be seen at all, only heard.

What the sound does

It slows a reader down. Two words beginning with the same sound cannot be hurried over, so the lines about the worst conditions take the longest to say. The hardship is in the mouth as well as on the page.

Then the tone

Four words fit: admiring, respectful, grateful and prayerful. Admiring, because the soldiers are called great and brave. Respectful, because the poem compares them to yogis instead of merely praising them.

The other two, and the one to reject

Grateful, because every line about their watching is set against our sleeping. Prayerful, because the poem ends by asking a blessing. Sad does not fit: nothing in the fifteen lines mourns, and a blessing is not a lament.

And the rule for all of it

Name the device, quote two or three words, and say what the poem gains. Three steps, every time, for imagery and alliteration as much as for the simile and the metaphor.

Scenario:

Three pupils are asked about the wind chimes line. Dhruv writes that it is a metaphor. Esha writes that it is a metaphor because there is no as or like in the line. Farhan writes that it is a metaphor. He says the chimes of the land are made to sound what the soldiers did. That moves the remembering out of people and into the country, he adds, so it goes on whether anybody is thinking about it. The question carries three marks. Their teacher gives one, two and three.

Analysis:

The marks follow the three parts of a good answer. Dhruv has the label and stops, so he gets the label mark. Esha adds the test, and the test is a real piece of knowledge: she can tell a metaphor from a simile and can say how. That is the second mark, and it is as far as most pupils get. Farhan does the part the question was actually set for. He says what the figure does. A plain sentence would have been that the country is grateful; the metaphor puts the remembering into the chimes of the land, which makes it continuous and independent of anybody’s attention. Notice how little Farhan quotes. Two or three words are enough, because the marks are not for copying the line but for explaining the effect. Learn his shape and use it for every device: name it, quote a little, say what it gains.

Activity:

Take any one device from the poem and write a three-part answer about it: the name, two or three words, and the effect. Keep it under forty words.

Title:

Say the weather lines aloud, twice

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The weather lines take longer, although they are no longer on the page. The repeated sounds will not let you hurry, which is alliteration doing its work in the mouth rather than on paper.

Free verse has no fixed rhyme or metre, which is why this poem can end a line wherever the sense does.

The word sweltering means oppressively hot, and it is used of the rays of the sun rather than of the air.

An expanse is a wide open stretch of land, so lonely expanses are empty country rather than empty rooms.

Simile or metaphor — A simile says so — A simile carries as or like and admits that it is comparing. A metaphor says one thing is the other and leaves you to notice.

The five devices — I See Many Rows Agreeing — Imagery, Simile, Metaphor, Repetition, Alliteration — the five the poem uses, and the five the book asks for.

Four tasks, and one habit

The chapter ends with word work and three things to make. They look unrelated: a box of geography words, five pairs to learn, a poem to recite and a badge to design. They are all the same habit, which is fitting a word to its place.

First, the box of words

Ghats, river, plateau, delta, bay, peninsula, mountains. The task is to pick out the terrains, and the quickest way in is to notice that not everything in the box is one.

What terrain actually means

The land itself: its shape, its height, its surface. Terrain is what you would walk on and what would make the walking hard or easy. It is not what grows there and not what has been built there.

So two of the words are not terrains

A river is a body of water. A bay is a piece of sea with land curved round it. Both belong in a geography lesson, and neither is a kind of ground, which is why the exercise puts them in.

The ones that are

A plateau is high land with a flat top. A delta is the spread of low ground where a river splits into channels before reaching the sea. A peninsula is land with water on almost every side. Mountains need no explaining.

And the ghats, which are two things at once

In most of India the ghats are the steps that lead down to a river, and a town will speak of its ghats as a Londoner speaks of a pier. The same word also names the two long hill ranges that run inside the coasts. Context decides.

Why this matters for the poem

Because the poem names its own terrains and does it in pairs: heights and valleys, deserts and marshes. A pupil who can say what a marsh is reads the line better than a pupil who merely knows it is somewhere wet.

Now the five pairs

Reach the summit. A barren landscape. A dense forest. An adventurous person. Making promises. Each of those is a collocation: two words that English keeps together.

What a collocation is not

It is not a grammar rule. Thick forest breaks nothing; it is simply not what a fluent speaker says. Do a promise breaks nothing either, and no speaker of English has ever said it.

Which is why they must be met, not worked out

There is no reasoning that gets you from promise to make. You meet the pair, you notice it, and you keep it. That is the only method there is, and it is the reason reading widely teaches English faster than studying rules.

A test you can apply

Say the pair aloud and listen for the wobble. Barren forest and dense landscape both wobble. A pupil who has read enough hears it at once, and a pupil who has not can look the word up and see which partner it keeps.

Then the recitation

The poem is to be read aloud with pauses marked, usually with a stroke where the voice should rest. The marks are not decoration; they are a decision about where the sense breaks.

Why reading aloud finishes the chapter

Because the alliteration of the weather lines only exists in the mouth. A reader who has never said season and snowy one after the other has not met half of what the poem does.

The acrostic poem

Write SOLDIER down the page, one letter to a line, and begin each line with its letter. Seven lines, seven first letters, and no freedom about them at all.

Why the constraint helps

Because it stops a writer reaching for the first thing that comes. A line beginning with D about a soldier has to be found rather than remembered, and finding it is the practice.

The note of gratitude

About fifty words, addressed to the soldiers themselves, beginning with a greeting. Fifty words is less than it sounds: one reason, one detail and one wish will fill it.

What to leave out of fifty words

Everything general. Brave, selfless and great can be written about anybody, so they are the first words to cut. A single detail - a weather, a place, a night nobody else was awake - does more than three adjectives.

And the badge of honour

A badge has to say one thing. Pick the single quality you most want to honour, find a shape for it, and keep the words on it under five. A badge that lists four virtues honours none of them.

Scenario:

Three pupils write the fifty-word note of gratitude. Gauri writes four sentences of praise: the soldiers are brave, they are selfless, they are great, and the country is proud of them. Harsh writes one sentence about his uncle who serves in the army and then runs out of things to say at twenty words. Ishita writes about the poem’s line on snowy days. She had been complaining about a cold classroom that same morning, she says, and has stopped. She hopes the soldiers get a warm night soon. Their teacher reads all three aloud and asks the class which one could only have been written by its own author.

Analysis:

Ishita’s, and the class can tell at once. Gauri has used her fifty words on four adjectives that would fit any soldier in any country in any century, which means her note says nothing that the poem had not already said better. Harsh has the opposite problem. His subject is real and his own, but he stops at twenty words because he has not decided what he wants to say about it, and a note of gratitude needs a point rather than a fact. Ishita does three things in fifty words. She gives a reason, which is the line about snowy days. She gives a detail, which is the cold classroom and her own complaining. And she gives a wish, which is a warm night. Notice that she never calls anybody brave. The gratitude is in the comparison she makes, and a reader feels it without being told to.

Activity:

Write your own fifty-word note with one reason, one detail and one wish, and no adjective of praise anywhere in it.

Title:

Mark the pauses, then read it twice

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

Most of the strokes land in the same places, because the sense decides them, but the words you choose to stress differ from your partner’s. A pause is in the poem; emphasis is a reader’s own.

The word delta comes from the Greek letter of that name, which is a triangle, and a river delta spreads in roughly that shape.

India has two great ranges called ghats, the Western and the Eastern, and the Western Ghats are older than the Himalaya.

An acrostic can be hidden rather than announced: some poems spell a name down the first letters without ever mentioning it.

Terrain or not — If you can swim in it, it is not terrain — A river and a bay are water. A plateau, a delta, a peninsula and the mountains are ground.

The five collocations — Reach, barren, dense, adventurous, made — Reach the summit, a barren landscape, a dense forest, an adventurous person, and promises made.