Class 9 English Chapter 12: I Cannot Remember My Mother

To linger or remain near a place without settling. The tune neither plays outright nor stops, which is exactly how a half-held memory behaves.

A small bed for a baby, usually one that can be rocked. Its presence dates the memory: it belongs to a time before the speaker could have known he was forming one.

The coral jasmine, also called Parijat or Harsingar. It flowers in early autumn and its scent carries at night and in the first hours of morning.

The rituals conducted in a temple at the start of the day. The stanza lays its scent over the flower's, so that two smells arrive as one.

To look steadily for a long time. The noun matters more than the verb here: what the speaker remembers is not a face but a way of being looked at.

A tune that seems to hover over his playthings — the song his mother used to hum while rocking his cradle. It arrives in the midst of his play rather than being sought, and the poem is careful to say that it comes only sometimes. The verb hover is exact: the tune neither plays outright nor goes away, which is how a memory held from before speech behaves.

On an early autumn morning the smell of shiuli flowers floats in the air, and with it comes the scent of the morning service at the temple — and both reach him as the scent of his mother. The sense is olfactory and the setting is outdoor, the only stanza placed outside. The two scents, a flower and a ritual, are laid over each other so that the mother is reached through the pair rather than through either alone.

Because the speaker is standing at his bedroom window. The sky is what he describes, but it is his gaze that travels rather than his body. The movement also reverses. In the first two stanzas something comes to him, a tune and then a scent; here he sends his eyes out, and what returns is the sense of being looked at — the stillness of his mother's gaze, felt as having spread over the whole sky.

Each stanza opens with the repeated title line, which states the loss plainly. Each then turns on the word only — only sometimes, only when — and produces an exception. So the shape is a denial immediately undone, repeated three times without variation. The effect is that each stanza feels like a fresh attempt rather than a continuation, and the loss is never argued away even while it is being softened.

A tune hovers over a set of playthings; a scent fills a morning; a gaze covers the whole sky. A cradle, then a garden, then everything overhead. It achieves movement in a poem whose first line never changes, and it works against the sense of the memories, which grow less definite as their reach grows larger. By the end the mother has no face at all and is everywhere.

Because of what the memories consist of. Not once does the speaker produce a face, a name, an event or a conversation. What survives is a tune, a smell and a way of being looked at — three things that arrive through the senses and carry no picture. The poem's claim is that this is what a very small child keeps, and that it is not less than a memory for having no words in it. The refrain is therefore corrected rather than disproved.

The poem is by Rabindranath Tagore, and its speaker lost his mother in early childhood — too early to have stored an ordinary memory of her. Each of its three stanzas opens with that admission and then produces something anyway.

In the first, the memory arrives in the midst of his play, unsought. A tune seems to hover over his playthings: the song his mother used to hum while rocking his cradle. The sense is auditory and the setting indoor. Two details matter. The verb hover means the tune neither plays outright nor goes away, and the poem says it comes only sometimes, so the memory cannot be summoned. The cradle dates it to a time before he could have known he was forming a memory at all.

In the second, it is an early autumn morning and the smell of shiuli flowers floats in the air. With it comes the scent of the temple's morning service, and both reach him as the scent of his mother. The sense is olfactory and the setting outdoor. The season is not decorative: the shiuli blooms at night and has dropped by morning, so its scent belongs to precisely that hour.

In the third, he stands at his bedroom window and sends his eyes into the blue of the distant sky, and feels that the stillness of his mother's gaze on his face has spread all over it. The sense is visual and the setting indoor, since it is the gaze and not the speaker that travels. Here the direction reverses — he sends something out rather than receiving it — and what he recalls is not her face but the quality of her attention.

The construction is identical in all three stanzas. Each opens with the title line, a refrain that states the loss plainly. Each then turns on the single word only — only sometimes, only when, only when — and produces an exception. Nothing else in the stanza's shape varies.

The poem has no rhyme scheme. It is free verse, held together by that repetition, by the parallel build of the three stanzas, and by the sensory images that fill them.

Within that fixed frame one thing does change, and changes steadily: the scale. A tune hovers over a set of playthings. A scent fills a morning. A gaze covers the whole sky. A cradle, then a garden, then everything overhead — so the poem moves outward even though its first line never moves at all. The senses widen with it, running hearing, then smell, then sight.

And this is what settles the apparent contradiction. A careless reading takes the poem as a man denying he remembers and then remembering three times. But look at what he actually produces. Never a face. Never a name. Never an event, a conversation or a scene. What survives is a tune, a smell and a way of being looked at — three things that arrive through the senses and hold no picture whatever.

The poem's claim is that these are what a very small child keeps, and that they are not less than a memory for being wordless. So the refrain is not disproved by the stanzas that follow it. It is corrected by them, and it is allowed to stand at the head of each one precisely so that the loss is never argued away.

Hearing comes first, and it carries the earliest memory. A tune hovering over playthings is something that reaches a child before words do, and the song is attached to a cradle, which places it earlier still. Sound is also the one sense that can be present without being attended to — which is why the memory can arrive in the middle of play, unnoticed until it is there.

Smell comes second, and it is the most exact instrument in the poem. A scent cannot be described, only recognised, and that suits a memory with no words in it perfectly. It is also the sense least under a person's control: the speaker does not go looking for his mother, he walks into an autumn morning and she is in the air. Two scents are laid over each other, a flower and a temple ritual, so that she is reached through the pair rather than through either alone.

Sight comes third, and it does the work of scale. From a window the gaze can travel as far as there is sky, and the stanza uses that distance to make his mother's attention limitless. But even here the poem refuses a picture. What he sees is blue; what he feels is stillness. There is no face anywhere in the poem.

Touch and taste are absent, and the omission is not accidental. They are the two senses a very small child relies on most, and they are the two that leave no image behind. A poem built from images cannot carry them — and their absence quietly supports the poem's central claim, that what is kept from the earliest years survives in forms that cannot be put into pictures or into words.

A literary device in which a writer uses a tangible object, an abstract idea or a phenomenon to represent something beyond its literal meaning. It lets a poet carry deeper meaning and reach a reader's feeling without stating the point.

A line or group of lines repeated at regular intervals through a poem. Here it is the title line, standing at the head of each stanza.

Language that appeals to the senses. This poem builds one image to a stanza, each on a different sense, so that the whole of it is sensory and none of it is descriptive of a person.

The repetition of the same opening consonant in words placed near one another. The poem's softest sounds are the ones it repeats.

A word that imitates the sound it names. Hum is the poem's example, and it is fitting that the poem's one such word should be the quietest kind of singing.

Symbolism is the device of letting some solid, touchable thing stand for an abstract idea or a phenomenon. The thing represents something beyond its literal meaning and carries a sense deeper than the words state. This poem's three symbols are the humming tune, the shiuli flowers and the sky. The tune stands for the mother's care and the earliest comfort the speaker was given. The flowers stand for her presence, seasonal and returning, and the sky for the reach of her attention, now without limit.

Alliteration appears in seems, some song and she in the first stanza, in smell and shiuli in the second, and in the phrase my mother, which alliterates with itself and recurs in all three. The poem's onomatopoeia is hum, a word that imitates the sound it names. What is notable is that every consonant the poem repeats is a soft one — there is no hard sound in it anywhere — and that its single sound-word names the quietest kind of singing there is.

The tone is tender and calm rather than grieving. Nobody is blamed, nothing is complained of, there is no exclamation mark or question anywhere, and every stanza ends in something recovered. The title states the loss before a single memory is offered, so the reader comes to each stanza already knowing what is missing. That makes the mood wistful rather than sorrowful, and because the title also serves as the refrain, the mood is renewed at the head of each stanza instead of fading as the poem goes on.

It activates memories of the mother. It neither enhances the joy of his play nor disrupts the atmosphere of it — the play is simply what he happened to be doing when the memory arrived. And the poem says only sometimes, so the statement that the tune lingers over his playthings only occasionally is true. He can feel her presence although she is absent because what reaches him comes through the senses rather than through recollection, and a sense impression needs only the trace to survive, not the person.

That the sky is a symbolic extension of the mother's presence — not that her gaze is physically there, and not that the sky mirrors her emotions. The emotion associated with the stillness is serenity. The statement that the gaze has a tangible and visual effect on the sky is false, since the effect is felt by the speaker rather than produced in the sky. Likening the gaze to the sky makes her watchfulness vast and constant: a face can be lost, but a sky cannot.

Four things. Repetition, since the refrain gives the ear something to expect and the same small word turns each stanza. Parallel structure, since every stanza is built to one plan — denial, exception, sensory detail, mother. Sound inside the lines, in the alliteration and the soft consonants of hover, hum, floats, stillness and spread. And progression, since the settings widen from a cradle to a garden morning to the whole sky, so the poem travels although its first line never moves.

Symbolism is the use of a tangible object, an abstract idea or a phenomenon to represent something beyond its literal meaning, allowing a writer to carry a deeper sense than the words state.

This poem has three symbols, one to a stanza, and each is simply the sensory thing that stanza is built on. The humming tune stands for the mother's care and for the earliest comfort the speaker was given. The shiuli flowers stand for her presence — seasonal, returning, and arriving without being summoned. The sky stands for the reach of her attention, which by the last stanza has no limit at all.

Not one of the three is ever explained. The poem never states that the sky represents her watchfulness; it says he feels her stillness has spread there, and leaves the connection to the reader. That restraint is what makes the symbols work, because an explained symbol becomes an argument while an unexplained one remains an experience.

The imagery follows the same principle. There is one image to a stanza, each on a different sense — a tune heard, a scent smelt, a blue distance seen — and the three run in that order, hearing to smell to sight.

And the mother is never described. Not her face, not her voice, not her name, not a single thing she said or did beyond humming over a cradle. Everything the reader is given is something around her.

This is not evasion. It is the poem's argument made structural. A man who cannot remember his mother cannot describe her, and a poem that described her would be contradicting its own first line. By building an entire presence out of things that are not her, the poem shows exactly what survives when the ordinary contents of memory do not — and lets the reader feel that this is enough.

Four things do the work a rhyme scheme would have done.

The first is repetition. The refrain stands at the head of every stanza, unaltered, so the ear is given something to expect and the poem has a beat of return without matched sounds. The same small word turns each stanza immediately afterwards, which repeats the movement as well as the line.

The second is parallel structure. Every stanza is built to one plan: the denial, the exception, the sensory detail, the mother. Nothing in that order varies. So what repeats is not merely a line but a shape, and a reader who has taken in one stanza knows the architecture of the next.

The third is sound placed inside the lines rather than at their ends. The poem alliterates — seems, some song and she in the first stanza, smell and shiuli in the second — and it chooses soft consonants throughout: hover, hum, floats, stillness, spread. There is no hard sound in it anywhere. The poem therefore has music without having a pattern a reader can predict.

The fourth is progression. The settings widen steadily, from a cradle to a garden morning to the whole sky, and the senses widen with them. The poem travels a long way even though its opening line never moves at all.

As for rhyme, it would have fought the subject directly. The memories this poem describes arrive unpredictably — in the middle of a game, on a morning walk, at a window when the speaker happened to look out. None of them is sought and none can be produced on demand. A regular chime at the end of every line would impose exactly the sense of arrangement the poem is at pains to avoid, and would make something that comes unbidden sound as though it had been called for.

The first extract is the opening of the poem, with the tune hovering over the speaker's playthings.

He is reminded of his mother during his playtime — the memory arrives in the middle of something that had nothing to do with her. The primary emotion conveyed is that the line activates memories of the mother. Two tempting answers are wrong: it does not enhance the joy of play, since the play is incidental rather than the subject, and it does not disrupt the playtime atmosphere, since nothing anywhere in the poem suggests distress or interruption. The role the tune plays is therefore neither disturbance nor resolution; it brings his mother into a moment and then is gone. The statement that it lingers there only occasionally is true, because the poem says only sometimes — which is also why the memory cannot be summoned. And he can feel her presence although she is absent because what reaches him comes through the senses rather than through recollection: a sense impression requires only that a trace survive, not that the person be there.

The second extract is the close of the poem, with the stillness of the gaze spread over the sky.

What the spreading suggests is that the sky is a symbolic extension of the mother's presence. It does not mean her gaze is physically in the sky, nor that the sky mirrors her emotions, nor that the stillness is fleeting and unrelated to her. The emotion associated with that stillness is serenity — not grief, not anticipation. The statement that the gaze has a tangible and visual effect on the sky is false, since the effect described is felt by the speaker and nothing is produced in the sky itself. The purpose of the likeness is to make her watchfulness vast and constant: a face can be lost, but a sky cannot, so placing her attention there gives a mother he never knew a place that is always available to him. And the tone of the extract is calm and comforted, because a stillness spread over everything settles rather than unsettles.

Words describing what the eye takes in — brightness, size, colour. Glowing, minuscule, vibrant, crimson and gigantic all belong here, and so does gloomy, which describes a look rather than a feeling.

Words describing what the ear takes in. Hiss, rustle, squeaky, sizzle, deafening and ear-splitting cover the range from the faintest to the loudest.

Words describing smell, pleasant and otherwise. Aroma, fragrant and scent on one side; stinky, pungent and stale on the other.

Words describing what a hand or skin registers — texture and temperature. Sticky, rough, hairy, chilled, smooth, slimy and fluffy. This is the one group the poem itself never draws on.

A dated personal record written in the first person. It is private writing, so it carries feeling as well as fact, and usually ends by reflecting rather than by concluding.

Visual — glowing, crimson, gigantic. Auditory — hiss, rustle, deafening. Olfactory — aroma, fragrant, pungent. Tactile — sticky, chilled, fluffy. The poem itself uses only hearing, smell and sight, so the tactile group is the one it never draws on — which is fitting, since touch leaves no image behind and a poem made of images cannot carry it.

Sizzle is often put with the smells, because what usually causes it is food. But the word imitates a noise and belongs with hiss among the auditory words. Gloomy is often set aside as an emotion, but in this exercise it describes how a place looks — dim and badly lit — which makes it visual. In both cases the rule is the same: sort by the sense the word names, not by what it reminds you of.

Scarlet lilies; the voluptuous scents of neem and champak and serisha; beating upon the air with their sweetness; birds bursting with the shrill ecstasy of life; heavy perfumes dissolved into aerial essence; and a flaming blue and gold sky. The two left over are smooth and sizzle — the only tactile word and the only harsh-sounding word in the set. Their being unused shows that nothing in Naidu's morning is touched and nothing in it is abrasive: it is carried by colour and scent, with a single burst of birdsong.

The first recalls a grandfather's advice about keeping morale high, and his question about who the bravest one was. The second recalls freedom to explore nature — butterflies, grasshoppers, paper boats in the rains. The third recalls a grandmother's tolerance and comic-strip tales told on a grandfather's lap, then muddled in retelling. The fourth recalls a beach loved in early childhood, found crowded on a return a decade later. The two unused statements concern school days as a reason to stay in touch, and parents urging adventure within limits.

The day, date and time at the head; the first person throughout; sensory detail; emotion expressed rather than reported; a focus on significant moments rather than everything that happened; and a closing reflection. The note teaches that the opening depends on what the diary is for. Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic treated their diaries as friends and addressed them directly; Samuel Pepys treated his as a documentation of facts, thoughts and feelings, and used no such address. Either choice is correct provided the rest of the entry matches it.

Hood's first line is the exact opposite of Tagore's — a statement of remembering — and it is likewise a refrain. He remembers in abundance: the house where he came into the world; the small window the sun used to look in at morning, roses red and white, the lilacs where the robin built, the laburnum his brother planted and which is living yet. Yet the poem turns to a wish that the night had borne his breath away. Tagore recalls almost nothing and ends in a stillness spread over everything. So remembering more does not mean suffering less: Hood has the detail and has lost the place, while Tagore has no detail and keeps what little he has.

The first task divides a box of twenty-five words by sense. The visual group holds glowing, minuscule, vibrant, crimson, gigantic and gloomy — brightness, size and colour. The auditory group holds hiss, rustle, squeaky, sizzle, deafening and ear-splitting, running from the faintest sound to the loudest. The olfactory group holds aroma, fragrant, scent, stinky, pungent and stale, three of them pleasant and three not. And the tactile group holds sticky, rough, hairy, chilled, smooth, slimy and fluffy, covering texture and temperature.

That fourth group is worth pausing over, because the poem itself never uses touch. It works through hearing, smell and sight alone, so the exercise quietly supplies the sense the poem could not — the one that leaves no image behind.

The trap in the sorting is sizzle, which feels like a smell because of what usually causes it. The word imitates a noise, and belongs with hiss. Gloomy catches students the other way, being set aside as an emotion when in fact it describes how a place looks.

The second task fills a March morning by Sarojini Naidu from nine words, two of which are extra. The blanks take scarlet, scents, sweetness, shrill, perfumes, essence and flaming. The leftovers are smooth and sizzle — the only tactile word and the only harsh-sounding one in the set — and their being unused tells us something about the passage: nothing in Naidu's morning is touched, and nothing in it is abrasive. A student who has nothing left at the end has put a word in the wrong blank.

The third task pairs phrases with pictures, and several of the phrases cross two senses at once — a scent called a melody, a sky called a canvas. That is ordinary in speech, where a colour can be loud and a voice warm, and it is exactly what the poem does when it hands a scent the job of carrying a person.

The listening task plays four short extracts of people recalling their childhoods, to be matched against six statements. The first speaker remembers a grandfather's advice about keeping morale high, and the question about who the bravest one was, to which the answer was always himself. The second remembers freedom to explore without restriction — butterflies and grasshoppers, paper boats in the rainy season, muddy water and sandy beaches. The third remembers a grandmother's tolerance, comic-strip tales demanded from a grandfather's lap, and then muddled in the retelling. The fourth remembers a beach loved in early childhood, returned to after a decade and found crowded, with a new sense of distance in the family.

Two statements are left over, concerning school days and parents urging adventure within limits. The extras are deliberate: with exactly four statements, a student could place the last one by elimination without having listened to the last speaker at all.

The speaking task asks for an object, a song or a place that is memorable, handled in five steps — introduce it briefly, describe it with sensory detail, narrate the specific memory attached to it, explain how it has affected you, and summarise why it still matters. Every prompt offered begins by placing the memory in time, which forces a speaker to anchor it before describing it.

The writing task is a diary entry about a school trip to a scenic place that appealed to all the senses. It must carry the day, date and time at the head, use the first person throughout, be full of sensory detail, express emotion rather than report it, focus on significant moments rather than everything that happened, and close with a reflection.

A note adds that Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic treated their diaries as friends and addressed them directly, while Samuel Pepys treated his as a documentation of facts, thoughts and feelings and did not. The lesson for a student is that the opening depends on what the diary is for, and that either choice is right so long as the rest of the entry matches it.

Tagore's poem opens by denying a memory and repeats that denial at the head of each of its three stanzas. It produces a tune hummed over a cradle, the scent of a night-flowering tree on an autumn morning, and the stillness of a gaze felt as having spread across the sky. Nowhere does it give a face, a name or an incident. It ends calm.

Thomas Hood's poem opens with the exact opposite line — a statement of remembering, repeated twice within itself — and it too works as a refrain. And Hood remembers in abundance. The house where he came into the world. The small window the sun used to look in at morning, never a wink too soon. Roses red and white, violets and lily cups. The lilacs where the robin built. And the laburnum his brother set on his birthday, which the poem says is living yet.

So one poet has nothing and the other has everything, and the natural expectation is that the second will be the happier poem.

It is not. Hood's precision runs directly into a wish that the night had borne his breath away, and the one surviving thing in his poem — a tree still alive in a garden he has left — makes the loss sharper rather than softer. Tagore's vagueness, by contrast, ends in a serenity spread over the whole sky.

The pairing therefore makes an argument neither poem makes alone. Remembering more does not mean suffering less. What comforts is not the quantity of detail but whether what is remembered can still be reached: Tagore's tune and scent and gaze return to him unbidden, while Hood's window and roses and lilacs are fixed in a place he can no longer enter. The poem with the fewer memories is the one whose memories still work.

A tune that seems to hover over his playthings — the song his mother used to hum while rocking his cradle. It arrives in the midst of his play rather than being sought, and the poem is careful to say that it comes only sometimes. The verb hover is exact: the tune neither plays outright nor goes away, which is how a memory held from before speech behaves.

On an early autumn morning the smell of shiuli flowers floats in the air, and with it comes the scent of the morning service at the temple — and both reach him as the scent of his mother. The sense is olfactory and the setting is outdoor, the only stanza placed outside. The two scents, a flower and a ritual, are laid over each other so that the mother is reached through the pair rather than through either alone.

Because the speaker is standing at his bedroom window. The sky is what he describes, but it is his gaze that travels rather than his body. The movement also reverses. In the first two stanzas something comes to him, a tune and then a scent; here he sends his eyes out, and what returns is the sense of being looked at — the stillness of his mother's gaze, felt as having spread over the whole sky.

Symbolism is the device of letting some solid, touchable thing stand for an abstract idea or a phenomenon. The thing represents something beyond its literal meaning and carries a sense deeper than the words state. This poem's three symbols are the humming tune, the shiuli flowers and the sky. The tune stands for the mother's care and the earliest comfort the speaker was given. The flowers stand for her presence, seasonal and returning, and the sky for the reach of her attention, now without limit.

Alliteration appears in seems, some song and she in the first stanza, in smell and shiuli in the second, and in the phrase my mother, which alliterates with itself and recurs in all three. The poem's onomatopoeia is hum, a word that imitates the sound it names. What is notable is that every consonant the poem repeats is a soft one — there is no hard sound in it anywhere — and that its single sound-word names the quietest kind of singing there is.

The tone is tender and calm rather than grieving. Nobody is blamed, nothing is complained of, there is no exclamation mark or question anywhere, and every stanza ends in something recovered. The title states the loss before a single memory is offered, so the reader comes to each stanza already knowing what is missing. That makes the mood wistful rather than sorrowful, and because the title also serves as the refrain, the mood is renewed at the head of each stanza instead of fading as the poem goes on.

Visual — glowing, crimson, gigantic. Auditory — hiss, rustle, deafening. Olfactory — aroma, fragrant, pungent. Tactile — sticky, chilled, fluffy. The poem itself uses only hearing, smell and sight, so the tactile group is the one it never draws on — which is fitting, since touch leaves no image behind and a poem made of images cannot carry it.

Sizzle is often put with the smells, because what usually causes it is food. But the word imitates a noise and belongs with hiss among the auditory words. Gloomy is often set aside as an emotion, but in this exercise it describes how a place looks — dim and badly lit — which makes it visual. In both cases the rule is the same: sort by the sense the word names, not by what it reminds you of.

Scarlet lilies; the voluptuous scents of neem and champak and serisha; beating upon the air with their sweetness; birds bursting with the shrill ecstasy of life; heavy perfumes dissolved into aerial essence; and a flaming blue and gold sky. The two left over are smooth and sizzle — the only tactile word and the only harsh-sounding word in the set. Their being unused shows that nothing in Naidu's morning is touched and nothing in it is abrasive: it is carried by colour and scent, with a single burst of birdsong.