Unseen poem for class 11 is the most important part to score higher marks in your exam. .Reading the unseen poem for class 11 in English will help you to write better answers in your exam and improve your reading skill.

Students who are planning to score higher marks in class 11 English poem should practice the English poem for class 11 before attending the CBSE board exam. 

It is compulsory to solve the unseen poem for class 11 because you need to score higher marks in your exam.

To improve your skills, we have provided you with the unseen poem for class 11 with answers.

While Solving the poem, you will see some unseen poem for class 11 with MCQs also present in them.

It is provided to make yourself an expert by solving them and score good marks in your exam. You can also practice unseen poems for class 11 in Hindi.

Steps to attempt Unseen Poem for class 11

Before solving the poem, we want to give you some tips to help you with an unseen poem for class 11

1-Read each and every one of the lines carefully in the poem. Read the poem twice, it will help you in understanding more about the poem and make it less difficult for you to find the answer.

2-If the poem has a title, then read it first as it gives you the basic idea about the poem.

3-While reading the poem underline all the word which you find difficult because you can be tested on those word in the vocabulary question.

4-Always give importance to the beginning and end of the poem because it often has the most important information of the poem.

5-While answering the question be sure that you have completely understood the question because the answer should be relevant to the question. Don’t try to give a general answer.

6-Ensure that you answer the question as it carries how much mark is needed. The subjective question should be answered incomplete sentence.

7-Write the answer in your own language and modify the answer according to the question.

8-Answer should be derive from the information in given poem.

9-Ensure that you use a similar tense in which the question has been asked.

10-IN MCQs read the questions and options properly before choosing the correct option because all options are often related.

11- Write the correct question number in answer sheet to avoid mistake.

Unseen Poem for class 11 with answers 

1.Read the following poem carefully and answer the questions that follow:-

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG
Good people all of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find wond‟rous short,
It cannot hold you long.
In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say,
That still a Godly race he ran,
Whene‟er he went to pray.
A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked everyday he clad,
When he put on his clothes.
And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
But mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
And curs of low degree.
This dog and man at first were friends;
But when the pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went and bit the man.
Around from all neighboring streets,
The wond‟ring neighbor ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.
The wound it seem‟d both sore and sad,
To every Christian eye:
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.
But soon a wonder came to light,
That show‟d the rouges they lied;
The man recovered of the bite ,
The dog it was that died.

1. Answer the following question by choosing the most appropriate option:-

i. The man in Islington seemed to lead a religious and pious life as____
a) He loved dogs and fed them
b) He was self centered and very busy
c) He went to pray regularly
d) He ran charitable trust

ii. The dog was different from the other dogs of the town because_____
a) it was not faithful
b) it was not aggressive
c) it lacked sensitivity to pain punishment and rebuke
d) It had human qualities of love hate and revenge.

iii. The dog went mad and bit the man because_________
a) It had to gain some selfish interests
b) It was shocked by the selfish attitude of man
c) The enmity between he it and the man unhinged it
d) It wanted to teach man a lesson

iv. The good people of the town considered the man‟s wound deplorable because_____
a) the mad dog had done something very evil
b) they foresaw the end of the good man because of the dog bite
c) the dog bite was unexpected and quite deep
d) the action of the dog was strange and selfish

v. the man recovered of the bite and the dog died because________
a) the man led a religious and pious life
b) the dog was cruel, ungrateful and selfish
c) the selfish dissember was more poisonous than a mad dog
d) the good dog had to go mad to bite such a kindhearted man

vi. The poetic device used in the last stanza of the poem is __
a)simile
b)metaphor
c) metonymy
d) irony

vii Why did the mad dog bite the man?
viii What did the people of the town predict about the man?
ix. What miracle took place that surprised the people?
x. Why did the dog die?
xi. What did the neighbours say about the dog?

2. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY—– William Blake
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O, my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:

‘Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

‘And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

‘For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,
Saying, “Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.”

‘Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

Answer the following questions in your own words :

1. ’My soul is white’. What does white refer to?
   a) complexion
   b) purity of soul
   c) black boy
   d) English boy
2. Why does the poet compare the bodies of the two boys to a cloud?
   a) because clouds are dark like them
   b) life is transient
   c) clouds are pure like children
3. In what sense has the word ‘heat’ been used?
4. When will the two boys be free of the black and white clouds?
5. How will the black boy help the white one?
6. What does the black boy long for?

3. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

A Photograph
The poem deals with the shortness of human life pitched against the permanence of Nature. The speaker sees the photograph of her mother at a seaside holiday with her two cousins. The mother is only twelve years old at the time and now she has been dead for twelve years. The finality of death makes the feeling of loss acute and there is a terrible silence, which speaks for itself.

Read the following lines and answer the questions that follow:

1. The cardboard shows me how it was When the two girl cousins went paddling Each one holding one of my mother’s hands
   a) What does the cardboard refer to?
   b) Who were the people in the picture?
   c) Where had the picture been taken and who had taken it?
   d) How old was the mother when the picture was taken?
2. All three stood still to smile through their hair At the uncle with the camera.
   A sweet face, My mother’s, that was before I was born And the sea, which appears to have changed less, Washed their terribly transient feet.
   a. Who does ‘they’ refer to?
   b. What is the idea expressed in the last two lines?
   c. Explain the figure of speech in the phrase “terribly transient feet”?
   d. What doyou think the poet wants to convey in sea, which appears to have changed less?
3. The sea holiday Was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry With the laboured ease of loss. a.Who is referred to as ‘her’?.
   b. What do they both miss?
   c. Explain laboured ease of loss.

4. There is nothing to say at all. Its silence silences.
   Answers
   a. What is the context in which the poet says these lines?
   The poet is unhappy whenever thoughts of her mother come to her as she knows that she will never see her mother again.

b. Explain: ‘its silence silences’. Death and loss of a dear one bring about a terrible void in one’s life and one is unable to put one’s emotions into words. There is a terrible silence but with feelings that cannot be expressed in any way or even shared with others. Only time can heal. The phrase’ silence silences’ is alliteration

Answer the following in 30-40 words:
a. What do you come to know about the personality of the mother?
b. In the second stanza the poet brings about a contrast. What is it? Discuss.
c. Explain the significance of the photograph.
d. Explain the use of oxymoron in the poem.

4. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

Father to Son
This poem deals with the breakdown of a relationship between a father and son due to a communication gap. They both want to do something to improve the situation but they have reached a deadlock in their relationship and so they keep silent. It deals with the grief felt by the father who feels completely helpless. Elizabeth Jennings sensitises the youth and the parents to the problems that parents go through universally due to the distance created by generation gap. This is caused mainly due to not keeping the channels of communication open by the parents who are involved in their own lives(careers, personal issues)

1) I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. ISchool
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small.

1). Why does the poet say “this child” instead of “my child”?
2). Why does he feel that he knows nothing about his child?
3). How does he hope to improve the relationship?

2) Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there’s no sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.

1). What does the phrase “yet have I killed” signify?
2). “The land is his and none of mine”. What does this mean?
3) Explain the irony in the last two lines.

3) Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.

1). Explain- silence surrounds us.
2). Why has a reference to the prodigal son been made?
3). What are the two options that the father faces? Which option would he prefer?
4). What does the father hope for?

4) Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land,
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.

1). Why does anger grow from grief?
2). What do the ‘globe’ and ‘land’ refer to?
3). Why has the poet used the phrase ‘an empty hand’?

Answer the following in 30-40 words:

1. How has the poet conveyed lack of communication between father and son?
2. Why, do you think, does the father appear so helpless?
3. How do you infer that the father wishes his son to remain at home with him?
4. Is the poem a lament of a father?

5. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

The Tale of Melon City
The poet asks the soft falling shower ‘ of the leaders and the utter passivity of the ruled. “Just and Placid’ as he is, the king is incapable of governance and wise decision. In the end he brings on the sentence of execution on himself, due to his own idiocy. When a new king has to be chosen, the Ministers decide that the next person to pass the city gate will be the king. As luck would have it, it was an idiot who passed by and he declared that a melon would be the king. Everyone is happy because ‘the principles of laissez faire’ were established and all are left to live in ‘peace and liberty’. The theme of the poem is that without proper laws and administration there can only be anarchy and chaos. Every citizen has to take responsibility for their actions so that the government can run smoothly.

Answer the following in 30-40 words:
a. Where and why did the king want the arch to be constructed?
b. What do the words ‘just’ and ‘placid’ imply? What is their significance in the context of what happens in the poem?
c. What argument did the architect advance in self-defense? How did the king take it?
d. What was the criterion of selection of the wisest man and what was the quality of counsel he offered?
e. Why did the crowd become restless and why did the king succumb to public demand?
f. On what basis was the new king chosen?
g. What does the comment of the councillor about the arch reveal about himself and the King?
h. Why were the workmen to be hanged? How did they escape hanging?
i. Pick out an example of irony and explain it in your own words.
j. What is the principle of Laissez faire? How is it established in the poem?
k. What is the message of the poem?

Answer the following 150 words:

1. Discuss the poem as a satire.
2. Comment on the ending of the poem. What bearing does the ending have on the title of the poem?
3. What impression do you form of the King from the poem?
4. What circumstances led to the execution of the King? Value points:

6. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

James Reeves The sea is a hungry dog
Giant and grey.
He rolls n the beach all day
With his clashing teeth and hungry jaws
Hour upon hour he gnaws
The rumbling fumbling stones
And, “Bones, bones, bones, bones!

The giant sea moans
Licking his greasy paws.
And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy cloud
He bounds to his feet and sniffs and sniffs
Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs
And howls and hallos long and loud.

But on quiet days in May or June
When even the grasses on the dune
Play no more their reedy tune
With his head between his paws,
He lies on the sandy shores
So quiet, so quiet
He scarcely snores!

Answer the following questions in your own words:
1) Which of the following has the sea been compared to?
(a) rain
(b) water
(c) dog
(d) Tiger

2) When the sea becomes stormy it is _
(a) Silent and quiet
(b) active and uncontrollable
(c) happy and obedient
(d) none of the above

3) How has the sea been described in the first stanza?
4) What are the surroundings like when the dog is sleeping?
5) What are the days like in May and June?
6) How does the sea behave at night?
7) What have the stones been compared to in the first stanza?

8) When is the sea calm? Find words in the passage which mean the same as the following:
a) To chew
b) Oily
c) Mountains

1). I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain. Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea.
a) How does the rain describe itself? Explain how the description is justified.
b) What is the rain describing in the second line? c)Why is it ‘impalpable’?

2). I descend to lave the droughts, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,and all that in them without me are seeds only, latent, unborn;
a)Where are these lines taken from and who is the poet? These lines are taken from the poem The Voice of the Rain written by Walt Whitman.
b) How does the rain get formed? The rain gets formed over the land and the sea. The vapors rise towards the sky and form clouds. These then change into droplets to come down to earth as rain.
c) What transformation does it bring about after falling down? When the rain descends to the earth, the earth is cleansed of all the dust particles and is fully soaked by the rain. It beautifies the earth and leads to the growth of latent seeds.
d) What happens to ‘a seed’ when rain comes down? When the rain comes down the seed lying latent for long, is filled with new life. It sprouts and grows in to a tree.

3). (for song, issuing from its birth place, after fulfillment,
Reck’d or unreck’d duly with love returns.)
a) Why are these lines put within brackets?
b) Explain the comparison made by the poet, between rain and a song.
c) In your own words explain the meaning of the phrase ‘reck’d or unreck’d.

Answer the following in 30 –40 words.
1) Which are the two voices in the poem ‘The Voice of the Rain’?
Answer. The first voice is the voice of the poet, who asks a question to the rain. The second voice is that of the rain and it is personified. It says it is the poem of the earth
2) Why is the rain important?
3) What does the phrase ‘strange to tell’ mean?
4) Comment on the use of imagery in the poem.
5) How do rain and song make the places of their birth more beautiful?
6) How does the rain justify its claim:’ I am the Poem of Earth’?
7) What is the significance of the water cycle? How can it be compared to a song?

7. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow:

CHILDHOOD
The poet wonders when he lost his childhood. He wonders whether it was when he developed individuality or became rational in his thinking or when he realized that adults are hypocrites. He also wonders where his childhood has gone and realizes that it is something that he has lost forever.
1). When did my childhood go?
Was it the day I ceased to be eleven,
Was it the time I realized that Hell and Heaven,
Could not be found in Geography,
And therefore could not be,
Was that the day!
1). How did the narrator realize that hell and heaven did not exist?
2). When does the poet think that he lost his childhood?
3).What trait of the narrator is evident here?

2). When did my childhood go?
Was it the time I realized that adults were not
all they seemed to be,
They talked of love and preached of love,
But did not act so lovingly,
Was that the day!
1). When did the poet feel that he lost his childhood?
2).What are adults presented as here? Which line shows that?
3).What does the poet mean when he says ‘did not act so lovingly’?

3). When did my childhood go?
Was it when I found my mind was really mine,
To use whichever way I choose,
Producing thoughts that were not those of other people
But my own, and mine alone
Was that the day?
1).What does the poet realize about himself?
2). Which trait of the narrator is highlighted here?
3). What kind of situation did the poet have to face earlier?

4). Where did my childhood go?
It went to some forgotten place,
That’s hidden in an infant’s face,
That’s all I know.

1).What change is seen in the poet’s question?
The poet instead of wondering when he lost his childhood now wonders where he has lost it.

2).What does he realize about his childhood?
He realizes that it is something that he has lost forever and can never hope to regain.

3).What does the last line signify?
This signifies that he is not very sure when he lost his childhood but he is certain that it is something that he himself has lost forever. Yet he can find traces of it on an innocent infant’s face.

Students can find different types of the unseen poem for class 11 CBSE board exam preparation. At the end of every poem, we have also provided you with answers to the unseen poem for class 11 given above.

So, first, solve the above-unseen poem for class 11 and compare your answer with their original answer in this way you can boost your performance.

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