Summary & Analysis Of the Poem Palm Tree
Palm Tree by Rabindranathis a beautiful poem depicting his greatness and powerful flight of fancy beyond the stars. ... The poet feels the palm tree has a longing to go beyond the ceiling of black clouds in the sky; it wants to fly away but sadly it has no wings.
Main Summary of Palm Tree
Palm Tree by Rabindranath is a beautiful, amazingly written message giving poem that depicts a Tree’s greatness and powerful flight of fancy beyond the stars. The palm tree is tall and strong therefore it has a feeling of superiority. The poem celebrates human nature. It shows the arrogance of being long. It depicts and portrays the desire to fly. He mistakes his leaves for wings. The poem is about the illusion nurtured by the palm tree out of arrogance, superiority and overconfidence. We also try to become someone else. we should not forget our roots.
Stanza-wise Summary & Analysis
In the first stanza, the poet compares the palm tree to a single-legged giant, taller than all the trees in its vicinity. The poet feels the palm tree has a longing to go beyond the ceiling of black clouds in the sky; it wants to fly away but sadly it has no wings.
In the second stanza, the poet feels the tree appears to be wishing to fly when it is moving in the wind; the tree might be thinking its fronds are wings and in the wind, it appears to be trying to move them to fly.
In the third stanza also the poet thinks the palm tree to be endeavouring to fly beyond the sky. Maybe it is flying beyond the stars in its imagination.
In the fourth stanza, the poet feels when the wind stops the palm tree’s efforts to fly also cease; its fronds do not move, they become quiet. The poet feels this subsiding of actions of the tree is symbolic of its realization that it is a tree – not a bird. After the wind stops, the tree appears to have realized that it belongs to the earth that is its mother; and then it stands quietly.
Main Theme of the Poem
The theme of the poem is based on the imagination of a tree that wishes to be a bird. The tree is standing in one place but he is imagining soaring high with the help of his fronds and quivering branches imagined as wings. In his mind, he is skirting after the stars across the sky but when The wind stops his fronds and he comes to realize that his home is his Mother Earth where he was sown as a seed and he is not a bird but he is just a tree. Having come to his reality he started loving his birthplace again.
Exercise of Palm Tree
Vocabulary Used
1. Fronds: Compound leaf of a palm
2. Quiver: Shake with the fast movement
3. Shiver: to tremble with excitement or fear
4. Sigh: A deep breath
5. Pierce: To cut or make way through
6. Soar: Fly upward high in the sky.
7. Skirting: being all around edges, enclosing
Questions & Answers
Extract1 [The palm tree… he flies?]
1. The palm tree stands on one leg. What does one leg signify?
Ans: One leg signifies the trunk of the tree.
2. What is the action that the poet imagines the tree doing?
Ans: The poet imagines the tree seeing past other trees into the sky.
3. What does the tree want to pierce?
Ans: The tree wants to pierce the grey clouds and soar away high up in the sky.
Extract 2 [at length…….All bonds]
1. What according to the poet does the tree wish?
Ans: The tree wants to spread around his head, the big round fronds (The long lives of some trees such as ferns or plants).
2. In the poet's imagination what does the tree think about its fronds?
Ans: The three things that the fronds are the wings which can help him to roam away from his home by breaking all the bones, that is that we could move (fly) with the help of his wings from one place to another.
3. What does the poet compare the palm tree too? How apt or suitable is this comparison?
● The poet has compared the palm tree to a bird.
● No, the comparison is not suitable because a tree cannot fly like a bird.
Extract 3 [The livelong…. the skies]
1. How does the tree think about flying?
Ans: The three thought of flying with the help of its branches which quivers (to shake strongly) sigh and shivers, this means that when the wind will blow the branches will move strongly and the tree will fly making sound and moving leaves.
2. Where does the tree reach?
Ans: The tree would reach the stars across the sky.
3. Where do the thoughts of the tree turn?
Ans: The thought of the tree turns back to his home that is to his mother Earth that gave him birth.
4. What does the poet mean by the phrase when the wind is still?
Ans: by this phrase the poet means is that the wind has stopped blowing and the leaves are hushed.
5. Where was the mind of the tree before this?
Ans: before this, the mind of the tree was in clouds and the sky.
6. What poetic device is used here? Give an example.
Ans: The poetic device used here is personification i.e giving human qualities to non-living objects.
For Ex: Here the trunk of the tree is compared to the human leg.