List of top English Questions asked in CBSE CLASS XII

What did you think the poem was about when you read the first few lines?
What makes for the differences between the timekeeping of the various clocks? What is the implicit comparison?
Does the poem bring out the contrast between tradition and modernity? Illustrate your answer with examples from the poem.
What aspects of Indian society and history get highlighted in the poem?
Give examples from the poem to show that great poetry is a result of close observation of natural phenomena.
What imagery does the poet use to delineate Summer’s day more picturesquely than any painter could?
How do the ‘trees in their autumn beauty’, ‘dry woodland paths’, ‘October twilight’, ‘still sky’ connect to the poet’s own life?
What do you understand by ‘Psalteries of Summer’?
How would you explain the image of the ‘Hindered Flags’?
Why are the pronouns referring to the Sun capitalised?
What is the contrast between the liveliness of the swans and human life?
What do ‘the light tread’ and ‘the sore heart’ refer to?
In which lines are creatures attributed with human qualities? How does this add to the beauty of the Summer’s day?
What contributes to the beauty and mystery of the swans’ lives?
The poem is a fragment. What do you think has made it a lasting literary piece?
Pick out
1. contrasting images that are juxtaposed throughout the poem.
2. images that strike the eye and images that strike the ear, both positive and negative.
3. the words used to describe the movement of water.
What is the discordant note heard at the end of the third stanza? Can we relate this to the grandeur and turmoil that are a part of an emperor’s life?
Which are the lines that refer to magical elements?
Does the poem have a real geographical location? How does the poet mix up the real and the imaginary to give a sense of the surreal?
Count the syllables in the lines of ‘The Divine Image’. Do you see a pattern? The first line has eight and the second line has six syllables. Two syllables make a foot in poetry. Here the first syllable of each foot is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed.
What is poetic ecstasy likened to?
Certain words in the poem have been capitalised. Can you think of reasons for this?
Blake’s poetry expresses one aspect of his multi-dimensional view of human experience—of mankind once whole and happy, now fallen into discord and tyranny, from which it must be rescued. Explain with reference to these two poems.
How are these two matched poems related to each other in content? How is the human being depicted in the Song of Innocence and how is he/she depicted in the Song of Experience? Do we find both aspects working in an average human being?
How would you explain the lines For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.